This week I am studying Criminal Law Defenses, also known as justifications.

A defense justifies or mitigates the defendant's or victim's actions. For example a common defense is self defense. Someone is attacked and the victim fought back. The question is whether the amount of force the victim used to defend them self was in proportion to the force the attacker used or was the force excessive.

This assignment is aMemorandum. In case you are not familiar with a Memorandum, this is commonly used when writing for the court. The Memorandum consists of the following:

Title the document Memorandum.

Questions presented: This is where you frame the questions your Memo will address. Think of this as the call of the question.

Statement of Facts: This is self explanatory. This is the facts of the case that are relevant to the questions presented.

Summary of Arguments: This is paragraph or two that summarizes your Arguments presented. Basically, you are telling the court where you arguments will lead them.

Arguments: This is where the issues, in this case the defenses, are defined and where you will use the facts to analyze the issues, and you will draw a conclusion.

Conclusion: This is where you drive the point home. You summarize your conclusions you set forth in your Arguments section.

It pretty much must contain all the aforementioned sections: The title of the document, which is Memorandum, Questions Presented, Statement of Facts, Summary of Arguments, Arguments and Conclusion.

Heres the scenario:

You are the newest member of the Public Defender's office. Please draft a legal memorandum as to whether Dan has any justifiable defenses based on the following facts:

Al went to Dan's gun shop to purchase a handgun and ammunition. Dan showed Al several pistols. Al selected the one he wanted and handed Dan five $100 bills to pay for it. Dan put the unloaded pistol and a box of ammunition in a bag and placed it on the counter. While Al was filling out the necessary registration papers, Dan went to the cash register to make change. As he was doing so, Dan noticed that the bills Al had handed him were counterfeit, and he exclaimed, "You rotten bum! You've given me phony money."

At that moment, Al grabbed the bag that had the gun and ammunition in it and fled from the gun shop. Dan grabbed a loaded pistol he kept under the counter and ran after Al, yelling at him to stop. As Dan pursued Al down the street, he fired a shot into the air, and yelled, "If you don't stop, the next shot will stop you." Al kept running, and, as he did so, he loaded a cartridge into the pistol he had fled the gun shop with, turned, and shot toward Dan. The bullet struck and killed Dan.

Only address defenses that are applicable based on the facts.

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1. Elements of a Crime
2. Criminal Acts or Actus Reus
3. Definition--An affirmative act, or occasionally an emission or failure to act, is necessary for the commission of a crime. Mere thoughts are not enough.
4. Attendant Circumstances - In addition to the requisite elements, many crimes require proof that certain circumstances existed at the time of the act in question. Without a showing of these facts, the defendant's actions are not criminal.
5. Criminal State of Mind or Mens Rea
6. Common Law
7. General Intent Definition-- Some courts explain, need not be specifically proven but can be inferred from the fact that the defendant engaged in the conduct constituting the crime. On the other hand, specific intent, courts say, cold not be inferred from the commission of the actus reus of the crime and thus were more difficult to prove.
8. List of Crimes
9. Specific Intent Definition-A specific intent crime requires a mental element above and beyond what is needed for the actus reuseither intent to commit some future act in addition to the actus reus, proof of special motive or purpose, or proof of the awareness of attendant circumstances.
10. List of Crimes
11. Malice --Malice is shown by the intent to kill, intent to cause great bodily harm, wanton and reckless conduct or felony murder rule.
13. Strict Liability-- (1954) An offense for which the action alone is enough to warrant a conviction, with no need to prove a mental state; specif., a crime that does not require a mens rea element, such as traffic offenses and illegal sales on intoxicating liquor.
15. The MPC provides that a person is guilty of criminal homicide if she takes the life of another human being purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently
16. Model Penal Code--The Model Penal Code (MPC) is a model act designed to stimulate and assist U.S. state legislatures to update and standardize the penal law of the United States of America. The MPC was a project of the American Law Institute (ALI), and was published in 1962 after a ten-year drafting period. The MPC was meant to be a comprehensive criminal code that would allow for similar laws to be passed in different jurisdictions. The MPC itself is not legally binding law, but since its publication in 1962 more than half of all U.S. states have enacted criminal codes that borrow heavily from it. It has greatly influenced criminal courts even in states that have not directly drawn from it, and judges increasingly use the MPC a as a source of the doctrines and principles underlying criminal liability.
18. Purposely--In such a manner that the actor engaged in prohibited conduct with the intention of causing the social harm that the law was designed to prevent.
19. Knowingly--In such a manner that the actor engaged in prohibited conduct with the knowledge that the social harm that the law was designed to prevent was practically certain to result; deliberately.
20. Recklessly--In such a manner that the actor knew that there was a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the social harm the law was designed to prevent would occur and ignored this risk when engaging in the prohibited conduct.
21. Negligently--
22. Scope of Liability
23. Complicity
27. Defenses
28. Infancy--
29. Insanity--

Type of crimes listed below:

Inchoate Crimes:

1. Solicitation - To encourage another person to commit an illegal act.
2. Attempt - To act with the intent to commit an illegal act and taking action to commit said act, that then fails or is prevented.
3. Conspiracy - An agreement or plan between two or more people to commit and illegal act.

Third Party Liability

1. Vicarious liability - Liability that a supervisory party (such as an employer) bears for the actionable conduct of a subordinate or associate (such as an employee) based on the relationship between the two parties.
2. Accomplice Liability- Criminal responsibility of one who acts with another before, during , or (in some jurisdictions) after a crime.

Crimes Against Property:

1. Robbery-
2. Receiving stolen property-
3. False Pretense-
4. Embezzlement-
5. Larceny - The nonviolent taking and keeping of the personal property of another with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of the property.
6. Larceny By Trick -

Crimes Against a Person:

1. Murder - The crime of unlawfully and intentionally killing another.