Criminal Law and Procedure
Criminal Law and Procedure rewards element-by-element precision: identify the mental state the statute or common law requires, then test the government's conduct against the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.
Substantive crimes
- Common-law murder requires malice: intent to kill, intent to inflict serious bodily harm, reckless indifference, or felony murder. Voluntary manslaughter requires adequate provocation with no cooling time; involuntary manslaughter requires recklessness or criminal negligence.
- Felony murder is limited to inherently dangerous or enumerated felonies committed during the res gestae; a co-felon's death is not murder in agency jurisdictions.
- Attempt requires specific intent plus a substantial step (MPC) or dangerous proximity.
- Accomplice liability requires intent to assist and actual assistance; withdrawal requires repudiation or timely communication.
Investigations and trial
- Searches need probable cause and a warrant absent an exception: search incident to arrest, automobile, consent, exigency, inventory, plain view.
- Arizona v. Gant limits vehicle searches incident to arrest to the area within reaching distance or where evidence of the offense of arrest is likely found.
- Miranda applies to custodial interrogation; the public-safety exception covers an unwarned question about a hidden weapon.
- Sixth Amendment counsel attaches at formal proceedings and is offense-specific; the Fifth Amendment right is not.
- Double jeopardy under Blockburger turns on whether each offense requires an element the other does not.
Worked example
Officers arrest Dan for driving on a suspended license, handcuff him, then search the passenger compartment and find cocaine. The search is unlawful under Gant: Dan cannot reach a weapon and there is no reason to believe evidence of the license offense is in the car. Suppress the cocaine.
Traps
Assuming a traffic stop authorizes a full car search; treating silence as an invocation of Miranda; using an uncharged offense to justify a search incident to arrest; forgetting that the exclusionary rule reaches evidence, not the entire prosecution.