Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure
Criminal Law and Procedure tests substantive offenses, defenses, and constitutional limits on police conduct. Separate mens rea from actus reus, then apply the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.
Core rules
- Mens rea: purpose, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence; distinguish specific-intent from general-intent crimes.
- Homicide: murder requires malice; felony murder requires an inherently dangerous felony; voluntary manslaughter requires heat of passion; involuntary manslaughter requires recklessness or negligence.
- Theft crimes: larceny, embezzlement, false pretenses, robbery, and burglary each have distinct elements.
- Defenses: self-defense, necessity, duress, insanity under M'Naghten, and entrapment.
- Fourth Amendment: warrants need probable cause; exceptions include search incident to arrest, automobile, plain view, consent, exigency, and Terry stop-and-frisk.
- Fifth Amendment: Miranda applies to custodial interrogation; voluntariness; double jeopardy.
- Sixth Amendment: right to counsel at critical stages; confrontation; speedy trial.
- Exclusionary rule with good-faith, inevitable-discovery, and attenuation exceptions.
Worked example
An officer stops a car for speeding, sees marijuana on the passenger's lap, arrests the occupant, and searches the passenger compartment and trunk. Under the automobile exception, probable cause to believe contraband is in the vehicle permits a search of the entire vehicle, including containers. If the stop were only a Terry frisk, no trunk search would be allowed. Statements at the station after Miranda warnings are admissible; booking questions are not interrogation.
Traps
Miranda requires custody and interrogation; a traffic stop is not automatically custody. Felony murder is limited to enumerated or inherently dangerous felonies. Consent has a scope. Inventory searches need standardized procedures, not probable cause.