Constitution and Criminal Law - Research Paper Example

Contents Introduction 2 What is Criminal Law? 2 What is a Crime? 2 Murder, Violence and Property Crimes 3 Crimes against the State 4 Social Crimes 5 Common Law Defense 6 Constitutional Rights before and after Arrest 8 The Constitutional Right to Trial by Jury 8 Constitution Rights Post Conviction 9 Conclusion 10 References 11 Constitution and Criminal Law Introduction Constitutional law in essence encompasses all the foundational regulations or laws that a country is based upon. This paper discusses broadly about criminal law and the constitution rights. Research on previous work relating the topic of discussion was key to arrive at the conclusion of this paper. What is Criminal Law? Criminal law entails prosecution by the regime of someone for an act or rule that has been grouped as a crime. Civil cases, moreover, involve persons and groups seeking to resolve lawful disagreements. In an illegal case, the state, using the prosecutor, instigates the suit, whereas in a public case the casualty brings the suit. People convicted of a crime may be confined, fined, or both. Though, persons found legally responsible in a civil case may just have to relinquish property or forfeit money, but are not confined (Siegel, 2010). What is a Crime? A crime is any omission or act in desecration of a civic law threatening or commanding it. Despite the fact that there are a number of common law crimes, majority of the crimes in the United States are made by the state, local, and federal regimes. Criminal laws differ clearly from one state to another. There is still a Model Penal Code that works as a good beginning place to have a knowhow of the fundamental structure of criminal legal responsibility. Crimes consist of both felonies that are more solemn offenses like, rape or murder and misdemeanors that are less solemn offenses like, jaywalking or petty theft. Felonies are more often than not crimes liable to be punished by imprisonment for one year or more, whereas misdemeanors are crimes liable to be punished by less than one year. However, no act can be taken as a crime or an offense if it has not been beforehand recognized as such either by common law or statute. Of late, the record of federal offences dealing with activities going beyond state boundaries or having exceptional impact on national operations has grown (Hail, 2005). All statutes unfolding criminal activities can be divided into their diverse elements. Most offences with the exemption of strict-liability crimes comprise of two basics: an act and a mental state. Prosecutors have to provide evidence of each and every constituent of an offense to yield a conviction. In addition, the prosecutor must prove to the judge or jury beyond a reasonable uncertainty of every verity necessary to make up the crime charged. In public cases, the petitioner needs to prove that a defendant is legally responsible only by more than 50% or a preponderance of the evidence (Gardner & Anderson, 2006). Murder, Violence and Property Crimes The detailed US violent crime rate comprise of only aggravated physical attack, while the Canadian violent crime rate comprise all sorts of physical attack, as well as the much more numerous physical attack level 1, which is physical attack not using a weapon and not leading to severe bodily harm. Crimes against property comprises of breaking and entering to people’s houses and getting away with their properties without assault. According to a survey done in 2004 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from the year 1981 to 1999, the United States had a lesser surveyed housing burglary level in 1998 than Australia, Canada, Scotland and England. Treason, Terrorism, and Wartime Criminal Justice In the account of the United States, the acts of terrorism, sedition, and criminal justice in times of war took on different forms. From the treason Act of 1798 to the present warfare on terror, the bill and its alterations have been challenged to guarantee national defense. To comprehend this it is better to first look at what terrorism and treason are and there effects they have had in the lessening of civil liberties at the times of war (Gardner & Anderson, 2006). Treason is identified as the treachery of one’s own state by waging warfare against it or by deliberately or intentionally acting to assist its enemies. In article III, Section 3, of the constitution, any individual who levy war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them comfort and aid has committed treason. Within the implication of the constitution the word comfort and aid refers to any act that manifests a perfidy of loyalty to the United States, such as supplying enemies with arms troops, shelter, transportation, or classified information. If a seditious act has any propensity to deteriorate the supremacy of the United States to assault or resist its enemies, assist and comfort has been given. The sedition clause applies only to untrustworthy acts dedicated during times of war. Acts of betrayal during peaceful times are not considered treasonous. Crimes against the State Crimes against the state are classified into two groups: particularly dangerous offenses and other offenses. Dangerous state offenses are acts or omissions designed at overthrowing, weakening or undermining the social and state system. They consist of high treason, spying, terrorism, harm, wrecking, anti-Soviet agitation, war propaganda, organizing activity for the intention of committing particularly dangerous state offences, and involvement in an anti-Soviet organization. Comparable offences directed against other communist states are also liable to be punished. More than ever, perilous state crimes vary from other criminal crimes in their anti-Soviet aim, manifested in acts directed not in favor of the foundations of the Soviet scheme. Crimes grouped as other state offences comprise a large faction of acts that breach on economic, political and other state interests as public and racial equality. precise crimes comprise of revealing state secrets or giving out documents that have state secrets, unlawfully leaving or entering a state, violating global air regulations or security regulations in civic transportation, smuggling, disposing or making of counterfeit money, violating currency policies and speculating in currency. Most of these offences involve intent, but the intention does not have a direct anti state orientation. Accountability for state crimes starts at the age of 16, although accountability for acts that may lead to a train wreck arises at age 14. Different terms and ways of punishment are established for state offences, depending on the type of the offence and the significance of the harm caused. Mainly dangerous state crimes, for instance, banditry or speculation in currency are liable to be penalized by withdrawal of liberty for up to 15 years with taking away of property. Social Crimes With the expansion of the labor association, increasing living standards, the stabilization of the metropolitan working class group of people and the desertion by capital of a strategy of all-purpose subjugation of the working class, crime becomes more and more marginalized. The difference amid politics and criminality, usual social life and crime becomes firmer. Serious rapacious crime becomes the doing of a semi professional criminal gangland and lumped proletariat, crime, but never stops to be an aspect, even if lessened, of working class life. A disseminate petty criminality, mainly among the juvenile in the shoddier sections of the working class, came, near the beginning part of the twentieth century, to be focused as the predicament of juvenile criminal behavior. Part of this comprised of residues of older ways of life of social crime. Historians have documented the continued existence of actions such as coal picking, pillaging of ship wrecks and smuggling well into the modern period. According to Siegel (2010), social crime here appears to have lost any characteristics which might differentiate it from insignificant crime in general. The purpose of community cohesion has altered from that of indiscriminate assistance for the criminal activity to a force that safeguards persons and families from its early destructiveness: from help for social offense to the social control of offense. In societies with less unity than the one that could have easily moved from the corner superstore to the dwelling next door and so turn out to be a factor in community breakdown rather than unity. The force of the community is thus a necessity for social crime. Communities unified enough to keep their serious villains and insignificant delinquents under control, are more capable to steer criminality into tolerated activities (Siegel, 2010). Common Law Defense A lot are people are bandying common law around in regards to self-defense, particularly signifying that Florida’s laws are a going away from common law. Common law is particularly customary law, or judge made law, that is built up by example over time. For quite a lot of years, a great deal of the regulations of England was done this way. The Romans came up with the thought of civil law, where everything was written down by act. Self-defense usually was a common law validation for certain offences such as murder, and assault, manslaughter. These validations were, for a long time, not codified in most government. Codification did not normally begin until quite recently. Under common law, it was lawful to use deadly force against an individual who was committing a crime. Not only was it lawful, it was considered a public duty to do so. It was lawful to use deadly force against any person breaking into a dwelling at night. It was not considered tolerable to do this during the day, except when robbery was a motive. On the other hand, duty to retreat merely applied, under common regulation, to an individual who was protecting himself against a physical attack in an affray or brawl and with the exemption that there was no responsibility to retreat in unexpected and violent cases; when immediate and certain suffering would be the result of waiting for the support of the law (Ristea, 2011). As the common law changed in the United States, Americans did not have a main liking for the obligation to retreat, and it operated its way out of the common law in many states, like New York, who incorporated no such prerequisite from common law when they codified their self-defense acts. Many states, when they codified their self-defense acts, disregarded common law and in essence formed this duty even when presented with a person committing a crime. Pennsylvania, for example, does not permit a deadly force to stop commission of a crime. That was dropped at the times of codification. However, the thought that the common edict created a duty to withdraw in all conditions is just plain false. Majority of the castle doctrine edicts more are closely equivalent to common statute practices than do laws of states that necessitate retreat even when encountered with a felonious attack (Gardner & Anderson, 2006). Constitutional Rights before and after Arrest The fourth amendment constitutional right to be free from unfair search and seizure gives one room to not be apprehended without an objective sensible belief that one has engaged in a criminal activity. All who are under arrest have the right to be treated charitably and without intimidation of violence. The person under arrest has the rights to privacy. Police officers may conduct a search of the arrested individual and any area in their immediate control and confiscate any weapons, and obvious evidence related to the crime (Quadrelli, Colt, and Friedman, 2011). After arrest, a number of rights and doctrines come into action. These rights have to be recited to the arrestee earlier than any questioning by a detective or police officer. An arrestee ought to also be warned that whatever thing said in the presence of officials will and can be used against them. Furthermore, at any time when an arrestee demands an attorney, one ought to be provided. This can happen anytime during detaining, hearing or interrogation. The Constitutional Right to Trial by Jury In all criminal trials, the accused shall have the freedom in all prosecutions by information or indictment, to a speedy, civic trial by a fair jury. In unlawful proceedings the judge shall inform the indicted of his freedom to trial by jury at the occasion he is put to appeal and, if the indicted does not then assert a jury, his right thereto shall be considered waived, but if a judge acting on motion prepared by the indicted within ten days after ruling finds that such waiver was made when the indicted was not completely aware of his rights or when, in the ruling of the judge, the appropriate administration of impartiality requires it, the judge shall quit the judgment and make the proceeding to be put for jury trial. In the light of what is mentioned above it is logical to say that the framers of the constitution merely were targeting upon preserving the right of trial by jury above all for the protection of the indicted or accused (Quadrelli, Colt, and Friedman, 2011). Constitution Rights Post Conviction Post Conviction actions are petitions filed by unlawful defendants in an effort to overturn their conviction. It is a common proceeding which is connected to, but part from the criminal case. They are normally mislabeled as appeals. The right of a defendant to come up with such a law or edict suit arises under the undertaking found in Article I, Section 5 of the Idaho Constitution of an individual to seek habeas corpus relief. In general, the right to seek habeas corpus liberation is the right of an individual to argue that the procedure taken to imprison them was unlawful. The two most ordinary types of confronts comprise of people being detained in mental organizations and people imprisoned on criminal crimes (Quadrelli, Colt, and Friedman, 2011). Defendants as well have the right to seek habeas corpus assistance in federal court when the person claims that their imprisonment was brought about as a result of breaches of the federal constitution. Some unlawful defendants file a lawsuit in federal court in the hunt for federal habeas corpus relief after a failed effort to get state habeas corpus (Quadrelli, Colt, and Friedman, 2011). There are regulations that limit the ability of a national or federal court to hear issues that were not previously raised in state court. As a result, many defendants will file for post conviction liberation in state court first, and then file in national court. This state then national filing is one of many causes why death sentence cases are time and again drawn out for years. Conclusion In conclusion, crimes are committed day in day out. They are committed by people who are either ignorant of the acts governing them or do not want to adhere to these acts. Diverse laws govern these crimes and protect the rights of the individuals who have been involved in the crimes. References Hail, J. (2005). General principles of law. New Jersey: The law book exchange LTD. Garner, T. K. & Anderson, T. M. (2006). Criminal law. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage learning. Quadrelli, S., Colt, H. and Friedman, L. (2011). The picture of health: Medical ethics and the movies. New York: Oxford University Press. Siegel, L. (2010). Criminal Justice. Wadsworth: Cengage learning. Ristea, I. (2011). Global accounts of the wrongfulness of criminal behavior: Contemporary Readings in Law & Social Justice. New York: Addleton Academic Publishers. Read More