Criminal Law: Legal Excuses

• Several excuses are recognized at law, including: duress, involuntary intoxication, mistake, age, entrapment, insanity, and diminished responsibility.

Duress

• Also known as compulsion.
• A condition under which one is forced to act against one’s will.
• Example: when someone steals a car because they are held at gunpoint and told to steal a car.

Intoxication

• Voluntary intoxication: The voluntary ingestion, injection, or taking by any other means of any intoxicating liquor, drug, or other substance.
• Involuntary intoxication: the unknowing ingestion of an intoxicating substance or intoxication that is not willful.
• Involuntary intoxication can happen when someone is tricked, forced, or unknowingly takes a drug like in spiked drinks or drug-laced food.
• Some people have secretly used Rohypnol, a strong sedative, in women’s drinks to lower their inhibitions.

Mistake

• Mistake of Fact: When a person misunderstands or misinterprets a fact that relates to the situation.
• Example: If a son invites his new friend Jerry over, and Jerry walks into the house without knocking, and the father who doesn’t know jerry tackles Jerry to the ground, thinking he’s a burglar, the father could claim mistake of fact.
• A reasonable mistake is one that might be made by a typically competent person acting under the same set of circumstances.
• Ignorance of Fact: Lack of knowledge of some fact relating to the situation at hand.
• Ignorance of fact refers to a lack of knowledge of some fact relating to the matter at hand, whereas mistake of fact refers to a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the facts at hand.
• Mistake of Law: A misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the law relevant to the situation at hand.
• Ignorance of the law: A lack of knowledge of the law or of the existence of a law relevant to the situation at hand.
• Culpable Ignorance: An individual’s failure to exercise ordinary care to acquire knowledge of the law may result in criminal liability.

Infancy Defenses

• Also known as immaturity defenses.
• Makes the claim that certain individuals should not be held criminally responsible for their activities by virtue of their youth.
• Juvenile Offenders: A child who violates the criminal law or who commits a status offense.
• The infancy defense is based on a person’s actual age, not their mental maturity.
• If someone is old enough to be held legally responsible, they can’t claim infancy just because they are mentally immature, instead, they would have to use a defense like insanity or mental illness.

Entrapment

• An improper or illegal inducement to crime by enforcement agents.
• Example: An undercover officer repeatedly pressures a person to sell drugs, even though they show no prior interest, and the person only agrees due to fear or threats.
• Subjective test: Is used to decide if someone was tricked or pressured by the government into committing a crime they otherwise wouldn’t have done.
• Asks whether the person was already willing or ready to commit the crime before the government got involved, or did the idea come from the police, not the person.
• If the person was already predisposed, they can be held responsible.
• But if the government pushed an innocent person into doing something wrong, that person may not be guilty under this test.
• Objective test: Looks at the government’s behavior, not the person’s intent.
• If police or government agents used unfair or extreme methods that could have led anyone to commit a crime, then the person may be able to claim entrapment—even if they were willing to break the law.
• This test focuses on whether the government acted wrongly, not whether the person was already planning to do something illegal.
• It’s easier for a defendant to win an entrapment claim under this test.

Outrageous Government Conduct

• Refers to actions by government officials that are so shocking, offensive, or egregious that they violate fundamental fairness and due process.

Syndrome Based Defenses

• Syndrome: A complex of signs and symptoms presenting a clinical picture of a disease or disorder.
• Defenses predicated on, or substantially enhanced by, the acceptability of syndrome-related claims.
• Battered Syndrome Women (BWS): A history of repetitive spousal abuse and learned helplessness.
• BWS is not in itself a defense, it is a condition said to characterize women who live in abusive relationships.
• One of the central problems with all defenses based on syndromes is that there is no syndrome that includes homicide, or any other law-breaking behavior, as a symptom of or as an inevitable result of the syndrome.
• Psycholegal Error: The mistaken belief that if we identify a cause for conduct, including mental or physical disorders, then the conduct is necessarily excused, or the false idea that if we can find a cause, the person isn’t responsible.
• The subtle message of these abuse-excuse defenses is that the real criminal is the dead victim and the defendant performed a public good by dispatching him.

Competency to Stand Trial

• Due-process requirements prohibit the government from prosecuting a defendant who is legally incompetent to stand trial.
• Competency to stand trial may become an issue when a defendant appears to be incapable of understanding the proceedings against him or her or is unable to assist in his or her own defense due to mental disease or defect.
• A defendant’s mental state is looked at in different ways during the criminal justice process.
• The two most important times are: at trial and the time of the crime.
• One of the main focuses of competency to stand trial is the defendant’s condition at the time of the trial not at the time of the crime.
• If a person is unable to assist in defense or is unable to understand charges the defendant will be moved to a mental facility, if they are able to consult with a lawyer or understands the charges the defendant will be moved to court.
• Incompetent to stand trial: As a result of a mental illness, defect, or disability, a defendant is unable to understand the nature and object of the proceeding or to assist in the defendant’s defense.
• Not Guilty by Reasons of Insanity (NGRI): The defendant is not guilty of the offense charged because at the time the crime was committed, the defendant did not have the mental capacity to be held criminally responsible for his or her actions.
• The insanity defense is based on the idea that, due to mental illness, the person was either unable to understand the difference between right and wrong, or could not keep from engaging in wrongful action.

Insanity

• A condition which renders the affected person unfit to enjoy liberty of action because of the unreliability of his behavior with concomitant danger to himself and others.
• DSM-V: The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that describes major categories of mental disorders.
• Irresistible Impulse Test: Claim that at the time the crime was committed, a mental disease or disorder prevented the defendant from controlling his or her behavior.
• Durham Rule: also known as the product rule, built on the court's belief that an inability to distinguish right from wrong is merely a symptom of mental disease and that behavior resulting from the disease is a more apt determinant of legal insanity.
• Substantial Capacity test: A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality [wrongfulness] of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.
• Guilty but Mentally Ill: A defendant was guilty of committing a crime but was mentally ill at the time of the offense.

Diminished Capacity

• The mental condition of the defendant might not be enough to exonerate the defendant of guilt but it might be relevant to specific mental elements of a crime and or elements of degree of a crime.