Criminal Law and the Regulation of Crime - Essay Example

Criminal law Introduction Criminal law offers an understanding into the regulation of crime. Criminal law, therefore, regulates social demeanor and disallows actions that harm or threaten the physical safety of other lawfully protected people. Unlike civil law that concerns itself with the settlement of disputes and compensation among people, criminal law outlines effective mechanisms of punishment as a means of taking responsibilities for any offensive act. Consequently, a criminal offense is one committed against the state or the government1. This is one in which nobody has to report or accuse an offender since the state through the office of the public prosecutor would accuse the alleged offenders. Constitutions protect the interest of the people. The United Kingdom and American constitutions, for example, attach more importance on the value of human life. In protecting this, the state takes the responsibility of prosecuting anybody who harms or threatens the life of the other. Such offenses in the United Kingdom and many other modern day democracies are categorized as criminal offenses. The case study portrays two friends who out of agitation and fear commit criminal acts and are liable to face legal charges. The two friends may be ignorant of the stipulations in the law. However, that is a perspective which is not admissible as a defense in a court. They both face separate charges of varying nature of offenses. However, the application of law on such occasions is guided by a set of strict principles which protect both the plaintiff and the defense. This follows the understanding that either party in such legal tussles deserves a fair hearing and justification of their conducts. Crimes require proof, a factor that complicates criminal cases even in clear cases as is with the diabetic Ant. One such principle is the legality of the offense2. Under this, an action becomes a crime only if the law defines it as such. In a court case, therefore, both sides must draw the connection of the action under investigation to the laws stipulated; failure of this leads to the case becoming baseless thus inadmissible. In the case of the two friends, the laws define the two acts they commit as criminal law and they are therefore liable for their actions. Under criminal law, no one should harm or threaten the life of another. In defining the life of another, the law states that this encompasses the health, safety, and moral welfare of the people. Any action, therefore, that threatens any of the three amounts to a criminal offense. The law draws different interpretations. It requires a plaintiff, which in most of the criminal cases is the public prosecutor, to develop a link in the defender’s action to the health, social wellbeing, and the safety of their victims. Ant deliberately punches a man in the queue following his agitations at the man’s conduct. The punch breaks the skin resulting in the man bleeding profusely. These actions clearly pose a risk on the life of the victim. However, Ant, while recording his statement, claims that he does not remember punching the man. It thus becomes the job of the prosecutor to establish effective evidence to connect Ant to the incident and prove beyond reasonable doubt that he, indeed, punched the man. The more difficult aspect of the entire tussle becomes the explanation of Ant’s motive for hitting the man. Ant, in his defense especially after denying any knowledge of causing harm to his victim, may prove that his intention of causing the injury was not at all sinister. It becomes a tussle of wits, which each party strives to prove the other less informed. Dec, on the other hand, operates on ignorance and assumptions. Out of fear and believing that the Sunderland fan would cause him harm, he hits the man and proceeds to drown him. He does all these in ignorance of the surveillance camera mounted on the wall. Evidence is a key component in a lawsuit, and visual evidence such as the recording is never easy to prove otherwise. His case is more complex and he is less likely to prove the prosecutor wrong with his allegations of murder. His only defense may arise should he argue self-defense. The law recognizes that one may harm another while defending himself or herself from an aggressive offender. The Sunderland fan had deliberately attacked Dec with no prior agitation; his sentiments and movements indicated a man more likely to cause harm to his opponent. Dec would, therefore, be justified to hit him with the rock thereby disabling him. The explanation would, however, become more difficult when explaining the aspect of concealing the evidence. The second principle is the actus reus translating to human conduct. Under this principle, a crime occurs only when there is an act of omission or commission by the accused and that a crime does not occur out of an individual’s status3. A person’s conduct must prove beyond any reasonable doubt the intent to cause harm to the other. This principle alludes that one cannot possibly harm a total stranger; the two must have a mutual knowledge or an understanding enough of the other to either ham or kill them. Through the application of this principle, such acts of violence as manslaughter and accidents receive recognition. The prosecutor or the plaintiff must therefore always prove the intent for the crime and have substantial evidence to explain the relationship between the offender and the victim to justify a criminal offense. The two case scenarios focus present cases in which both Ant and Dec had no prior knowledge of their victims yet they proceed to harm them. The principle of human conduct has minimal relevance in both the cases because in as much as the two did not know their victims prior to the incidences, the events leading to the crimes justify the animosity that both Ant and Dec level against their victims. Despite the fact that Ant did not know the man he hit, the man agitated him enough to earn his wrath. The prosecutor has the obligation of proving the agitation and justifying the fact that through the brief interaction between Ant and his victim in the queue, Ant had gained adequate information about his victim to harm him. Ant has minimal space and information to gain defense from the principle of his conduct. His conduct had caused harm to another party and it is believed that he intended to harm him. If only he may possibly convince the jury that in stretching his arm that he accidentally hit the stranger, in whom he had no prior intentions to harm. Dec, on the other hand, behaved in a manner likely to suggest that he wanted to harm his assailant. His conduct, therefore, openly results in harm to the other party thereby substantiating his acts as a criminal offense. The prosecutor will produce the tape showing how Dec hits his assailant; the manner in which he does this explains his intention. His subsequent actions of drowning the man who is arguably alive will thereafter provide more evidence to the fact that Dec had intended to cause harm to his victim. In building his defense, Dec cannot draw ignorance to the case despite the fact that all his actions arise from his ignorance of the other man’s intentions. However, he may possibly convince the jury that he had not intended to kill the man despite the fact that he hit him with a boulder. In doing this Dec has to scrutinize the video and observe the manner in which he hit the man, he must have hit a sensitive part of the body to incapacitate him immediately. He thus has to convince the jury that he had hit the specific part because he hoped it would prevent the victim from causing him any further harm. Dec’s case is more complicated by the fact that the prosecutor may through a post mortem on the body determine that the man died of drowning and not necessarily the impact of the rock. This will therefore require Dec to build his defense based on the placement of the rocks in the man’s pockets an action, which is an attempt of concealing evidence thereby interfering with a legal investigation, a criminal offense in its own right. Dec may therefore possibly face two separate charges under this principle. The third principle of criminal law is causation. For a crime to occur there must be a relationship between the action and the harm suffered. The prosecutor under this context has the obligation of establishing that in deed the acts of the offender resulted in the harm that the victim suffers. This principle complicates legal tussles as it defines the harm as any physical or psychological detriment to another. Any action that results in the physical injury or psychological effect of the victim thus quantifies as a criminal offense. The prosecutor establishes the relationship between the action of the offender and the impact of the action on the victim. Physical impacts are observable while psychological harms are justified by reasonable explanations of either side of the case. The inclusion of the psychological harm in a case compounds the case and may result into other secondary cases facing the offender. Psychological damage may include the damage on the reputation of the victim or an action, which results in the victim suffering from a mental breakdown4. The two cases presented in the case study present aspects of the principle since the prosecutor easily points out the smack on the face of Ant’s victim to the resultant break of skin and the subsequent loss of blood, which endangers the life of the victim. It thus becomes understandable that Ant’s actions caused direct physical harm to the victim making him answerable to the first case. This principle provides Ant with minimal defense provisions. The several eyewitnesses watched as he hit the man’s face and it thus becomes easy to allude that the man’s face was intact before the impact of Ant’s blow. The government presents the case relating to the physical harm but the victim may later advise the state prosecutor that he suffered a psychological damage owing to the stress arising from the conflict and the shock of the blow. Such a case is more difficult to build a defense against but the plaintiff must prove through the advice of a qualified psychoanalyst that he indeed suffered any of the numerous mental complications following the squabble. Ant therefore only hopes that he does not proceed to file such a case but may also argue that the man must have had the psychological complications prior to the conflict, which will also be difficult for the plaintiff to deny. The presence of the surveillance camera on the scene of crime complicates issues for Dec to deny the obvious relationship between the impacts of his blow to his immediate collapse. It becomes evident that the man was physically fit and had in fact come from a social event, which he could not have attended had he been otherwise. It is also evident that Dec’s blow immediately makes him motionless. The conspicuous relationship between Dec’s action to the harm in his victim’s life makes the case an open criminal offense compelling the public prosecutor to open up a legal case against Dec. Under this principle, Dec has minimal chances of defending himself since he later places rocks in the man’s pockets to make him sink and toss him over into the river.it thus becomes justifiable that the man drowns because of the rocks Dec deliberately places in his pockets and the fact that he consciously drags his immobile body into the river. It becomes understandable when Dec argues that he hit the man with the rock in self-defense, it however does not make sense that he later drags an immobile body, which posed no threat to him into the river. Mens rea, a Latin word for the state of the mind, is a principle of criminal law which criminalizes all acts of arising from a guilty mind. This principle is normally more applicable in situations that show either recklessness or indifference of the offenders. It may be more difficult to prove this in the actions of the offender and the legislations of crime normally order the state to sponsor psychoanalysis on the offenders of some of the grossest actions that pose threats to human actions5. The state understands that it is not impossible but very difficult for a person to kill another especially a stranger deliberately. Most murder suspects evade facing murder charges following the certifications unstable mental states by state psychiatrists. It is not possible to try a mad or psychologically impaired individual. The legal system abandons such cases but prescribe the elimination of such offenders from the society either by admitting them into psychological facilities or recommending psychiatric services to reverse their mental state thus making them better members of the society. Just as stated earlier, a legal tussle is a game of wits and people use whichever mechanism either to evade convictions or to convict their suspects. It thus is not surprising when Ant claims that he does not remember hitting his victim despite the numerous witnesses. The fact that he got easily agitated and hit his victim clearly quantifies his actions as reckless and harmful but he cleverly alludes to an unstable mind, he uses this owing to the fact that he is diabetic a medical officer may determine this and recommend a rehabilitation and medication instead of a punitive imprisonment. It all thus depends on how he convinces the jury that his diabetic state affects his reasoning and view on reality. The same may possibly apply to his friend Dec, despite the fact that his actions are reckless; they are also obviously bizarre and not associated to a normal mind. It is difficult to kill a person and anybody who kills another deserves a mental check, this is a legal right of every murder suspects in the United Kingdom’s criminal law. However, his possibility of using the mental state as an escape mechanism is complicated by the fact that he had no past report of a chronic ailment most of which hamper the reasoning ability of the individual. Furthermore, his actions appear to be adequately thought over thereby implying an appropriately thinking individual. After hitting his victim with a rock, he kneels down to check his pulse rate. When he determines that the man is indeed not breathing, he puts stones into his pockets to make him sink thereby obliterate any trace of the crime. These actions infer an upright mind, which is able to devise plans of evading his legal obligations, and are not as spontaneous as would be suspected in an unstable mind of either a retard or a mental case. Finally, the principle of punishment asserts that every criminal offense must have an adequate and satisfactory punishment attached to it and clearly elaborated within the criminal law6. Any action that does not have a pre written mode of punishment does not qualify to be a criminal offense since after conviction the jury will fail to dispense justice by recommending both responsibility and accountability. Murder within the British legal system attracts a maximum punishment of life imprisonment. However, this is subject to the evaluation of the evidence and the establishment of the motive of the murder. Assault on the other hand attracts shorter periods of imprisonment and fines, which also vary with respect to the level of the assault and the effect of each. Both the crimes in the case are assaults but Dec’s results in the death of his victim. This may qualify as either a murder or manslaughter depending on the presentation of the evidence. Manslaughter has a lighter punishment than murder. The difference between the two lies in the intent of each even though both results in the death of the victim. Ant’s assault on his victim is lighter even though it also results in the injury of the victim. The court will determine the level of the assault based on the evidence presented by either side and determine the right punishment as stated in the criminal law. This may include both a short term imprisonment and a fine or either of the two. In conclusion, the application of the criminal law vary from country to country but all have universal principles which help weigh the evidence in each case thus determine the guilt of the offender thereby advising the amount of the punishment. Bibliography Ballantine, J. H., & Roberts, K. A. (2010). Our social world: Introduction to sociology. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, An Imprint of SAGE Publications. Gardner, T. J., & Terry, M. A. (2012). Criminal law. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Glendon, M. (1994). A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Herring, J. (2012). Criminal law: text, cases, and materials. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jonakait, R. (2003). The American Jury System. New Haven [Conn.: Yale University Press. Wallace, H. & Cliff, R. (2012). Principles of Criminal Law. New York: Prentice Hall. Read More