Criminal Law Assignment Sample

Introduction of Criminal Law Assignment

This report represents an overview of the general principles regarding criminal liability. There are many definitions under the general principles that made the mandatory elements of criminal liability. To blame any person as criminal some basic elements or constituents must be proved in this law. Under this law, there are some offenses are decided by ascertaining the particular definitions and liability of the prosecution. Sometimes grounds for defence are also ascertained under law. This report also explains some offenses and their elements that must be proved for any offense. A case study is also described in the report and appropriate suggestions are also made in this report based on criminal law. Some criminal liability of Kamala and Sarah's names is mentioned in this report.

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Issue

There is a case study provided in which two teams are playing rugby. One team is Gallodan Giants are a senior women's rugby union team and the other team's name is Monthorpe Mavericks. The game has started and the giants are in lead by two points with three minutes to go on the same time Mavericks have the ball inside the Giant's half of the pitch. The game was ongoing and suddenly Haya a player of the Mavericks team run towards the giants' goal line for scoring in the game. Kamala is the rivalry team's player who is the closest player to Haya. Kamala runs to take lead towards Haya but she got to fails. After this Kamala was still angry due to that moment and Haya fell on the ground and insulted her. Consequently, Kamala kicked out wildly at Haya's leg, and due to this serious injury occurred as her leg was cracked and she collapsed. After this referee blows the whistle and called the medics on the pitch to attend the Haya. On this Kamala stated that she was just walking towards Giant's dugout on the call of the referee.

After this Sarah who is the player of Mavericks is angry at Kamala’s actions. The game was restarted and the Giants win the game and the league title. When the Giants were celebrating their winning meanwhile there was too much noise due to the celebration Miriam who is the head coach of the Mavericks team got illusions that Curtis other team's coach is coming up towards him with fists raised to attack her. In defence, Miriam picked up the metal rugby and hit on his head repeatedly during this Curtis dies on the spot. Miriam is found to have glioblastoma which is like a brain tumour. Due to that, she was causing hallucinating, anger, and loss of her control but that disease was treated and she got fine.

After this game ended and all players were in their changing room. Sarah was still angry due to the injustice of the Giants winning due to Kamala’s attack on Haya so, finding the Kamala. Due to anger, Sarah punches Kamala's shoulder. During this Juliana Kamala's teammate jumps to safeguard her. The punch was hurt on Juliana's chest. Due to this Juliana falls and it's having a heart attack. When she reached the hospital her death was acknowledged by the doctor. In this way, the case was discussed and some advice is provided to Kamala and Sarah in respect to deciding their criminal liability.

Rules

In criminal liability, there are mainly two chief components to made criminal liability such as actus Reus and men's rea. According to law any act that is prohibited done by the accused that caused to be omission, consequences. Some defences are explained under criminal law such as duress. There are some general defences as well as some specified defences that only focus on specific offenses. General defences can be protected interests defences, insanity, and automatism. Accused must be proved with all constituent elements of crime and he is charged beyond all the reasonable doubts (Dremliuga and Prisekina, 2020).

Basic Principles of culpability

Generally, all offenses required some acts or actions done by the accused which brings out any offense, but in criminal law, it is necessary to do any act by the accused with intention or recklessly. Accused must have legal capacity (Aijazi and Baines, 2017). The burden of proof is also described in the law as the legal burden of proof is sometimes referred to as the persuasive burden on a fact in issue and the evidential burden as one of adducing evidence that is enough for the jury or judges in the court. Standard of proof is the degree that is established by the party bearing the burden of proof on an issue (Brink, 2019).

There are some exceptional cases where the burden of proof lies on the defence such as if the defendant pleads guilty, if there is any statutory expression, and implied statutory exception. Evidential burden is another thing under which burden is to be considered as a burden on one party to adduce evidence rather than proving that (Yaffe, 2018).

Actus Reus establishes some elements such as an act, act committed in legally relevant situations, and causing the prohibited results. These elements must be proved only after that actus Reus is to be considered. Under this act or omission conducted by the accused must be voluntary (Hirstein, et. al., 2018).

Omissions

Under this, some positive acts must be done by the accused. According to law some specific acts or duties are imposed upon the person and during the performing that duty some failure or omission can be done that made some act. These kinds of crimes are mostly done under statutory crimes which are specifically defined in the terms of an omission to act. It is considered a conduct crime (Simmler and Markwalder, 2019).

Result crimes explain as some failure or omissions that resulted in some harm that defined in the offense. Under this actor is under the duty (Robinson and Darley, 2019). According to the law, there cannot be criminal liability arising on the men's rea alone, and in some crimes actus, Reus is defined as guilty mind. Causation is the reason for deciding the criminal liability of the accused person with actus Reus (Sarch, 2017). According to law when causation is in issue the accused's act or omission must be proved and it must be the legally imputable cause. Causation can be such as factual causation or legal causation (Morse, 2021).

Mental element

It is also a compulsory element for deciding the accused person as men's rea is considered under this as according to this any act does not make any person guilty unless his mind is guilty. According to this, no person can commit the crime until his mind is not guilty and has some wrong intentions. The intention is also a very important term that is explained under the law. It can be basic intent or specific intent in any act. Basic intent only includes the offenses that require either recklessness or intention to satisfy men's rea. Specific intent is having prohibited consequences such as grievous bodily harm, murder, theft, or robbery. Sexual assault, assault by penetration, rape, and possession of drugs these involved under basic intent (Feld, 2017).

Recklessness

For the establishment of men's rea recklessness is enough. It has been the subject of judicial controversy. Priorly courts were implemented the subjective test to find the recklessness. It can be defined as the accused would only be found to have acted recklessly where he had recognized the possible consequence from occurring (Slobogin, 2017).

Negligence

It can be explained as some acts conducted by the person under which he neglects the standard grounds or expected conditions of a reasonable person. It can be considered as a failure to comply with some standards (Kittilstad, 2018).

Strict Liability

Strict liability can be considered when it is not necessary to prove men’s rea to establish liability for the accused person. Some offenses under it can be regulatory not only criminal (Sarch, 2017).

Duress

This word is derived from common law, not statute. Under this accused person admits that he has done some act with men’s rea but along with this he also states that he has received some serious threats against him or his family to inflict serious injury or harm. There are some important caveats regarding Duress such as imminence of the threat, voluntary association with criminals, and limits on the availability of the defence (Robinson, 2021).

Elements of murder

There are some five basic elements of murder that constituent the murder such as unlawful death of the victim was caused by any act or omission conducted by defendant and defendant did not act or omitted malice aforethought, express or implied (Moran and Farley, 2019).

References

Aijazi, O. and Baines, E., 2017. Relationality, culpability and consent in wartime: Men’s experiences of forced marriage. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 11(3), pp.463-483.

Brink, D.O., 2019. The nature and significance of culpability. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 13(2), pp.347-373.

Dremliuga, R. and Prisekina, N., 2020. The Concept of Culpability in Criminal Law and AI Systems. J. Pol. & L., 13, p.256.

Feld, B.C., 2017. Competence and culpability: Delinquents in juvenile courts, youths in criminal courts. Minn. L. Rev., 102, p.473.

Hirstein, W., Sifferd, K.L. and Fagan, T.K., 2018. Responsible brains: Neuroscience, law, and human culpability. MIT Press.

Kittilstad, E., 2018. REDUCED CULPABILITY WITHOUT REDUCED PUNISHMENT. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 108(3), pp.569-596.

Moran, R. and Farley, M., 2019. Consent, coercion, and culpability: is prostitution stigmatized work or an exploitive and violent practice rooted in sex, race, and class inequality?. Archives of sexual behavior, 48(7), pp.1947-1953.

Morse, S.J., 2021. Internal and external challenges to culpability. Ariz. St. LJ, 53, p.617.

Robinson, D., 2021. The Author Responds: Culpability Theories in Extreme Cases. Temp. Int'l & Comp. LJ, 35, p.155.

Robinson, P.H. and Darley, J.M., 2019. Justice, liability, and blame: Community views and the criminal law. Routledge.

Sarch, A., 2017. Double Effect and the Criminal Law. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 11(3), pp.453-479.

Sarch, A., 2017. Who cares what you think? Criminal culpability and the irrelevance of unmanifested mental states. Law and Philosophy, 36(6), pp.707-750.

Simmler, M. and Markwalder, N., 2019, March. Guilty Robots?–Rethinking the Nature of Culpability and Legal Personhood in an Age of Artificial Intelligence. In Criminal Law Forum (Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 1-31). Springer Netherlands.

Slobogin, C., 2017. Neuroscience nuance: dissecting the relevance of neuroscience in adjudicating criminal culpability. Journal of Law and the Biosciences.

Yaffe, G., 2018. Is Akrasia Necessary for Culpability? On Douglas Husak’s Ignorance of Law. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 12(2), pp.341-349.