1 - UThink Blogs at the University of Minnesota

1. A young man beats a stranger on the street with a baseball bat for “kicks.” The victim dies.2. A wife cheats on her husband for months; he begs her not to leave him. She replies, “No, I‟m going to court, you‟re going to have to give me all the furnitur e, you‟re going to have to get the Hell out of here, you won‟t have nothing.” Then, pointing to her crotch, she says, “You‟ll never touch this again, because I‟ve got something bigger and better for it.” He broke into tears, and begged some more. “Why don‟t you try to save the marriage? I have nothing more to live for.” “Never, I‟m never coming back to you.” He “cracked,” ran into the next room, got a gun, and shot her to death.3. Another husband‟s wife wanted to leave him, and he too wanted her to stay. He coaxed her into his car, and drove off with her so he could convince her with the help of a gun, to keep their marriage together. When they stopped at a coffee shop, she jumped out of the car, and tried to run away. He ran after her with the gun he had in the car; she fell; he put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger; nothing happened. Repeatedly pulling the trigger, he shouted, “It won‟t fire! it won‟t fire! The gun was unloaded.4. Two robbers met a drunk man in a bar displaying a wad of money. When the drunk man asked them for a ride, they agreed, drove him out into the country, robbed him, forced him out of the car without his glasses, and drove off. A college student, driving at a reasonable speed didn‟t see the victim standing in the middle of the road waving him down, couldn‟t stop, struck, and killed the victim.5. A young woman was on a three-day “crack” cocaine binge; she propped up a bottle so her three-month old baby could feed himself. The baby died of dehydration.6. During the Korean War, a mother dreamt an enemy soldier was on top of her daughter. In her sleep, she got up, walked to a shed, got an axe, went to her daughter‟s room and plunged the axe into her daughter, believing she was killing the enemy soldier. The daughter died instantly; the mother was beside herself with grief.7. A neighbor tells an 8-year-old boy and his friend not to play behind a building because it‟s dangerous. The boy belligerently answered, “In a minute.” Losing patience, the neighbor said, “No, not in a minute, get out of there now!” A few days later, he broke into her house, pulled a goldfish out of its bowl, choped it into little pieces with a steak knife, and smeared it all over the counter. Then, he went into the bathroom, plugged in a curling iron, and clamped it onto a towel.8. A young man lived in a ground level apartment with a large window opening on to the building parking lot. At 8 o‟clock one morning, he stood naked in front of the window eating his cereal in full view of those getting in and out of their cars.9. A college student was sentenced to jail for failing to return two library books.10. A husband watched his wife suffer from the agony of dying from an especially painful terminal cancer. He shot her with one of his hunting guns; she died instantly.11. A man knew he was HIV positive. A doctor instructed him about safe sex and the need to tell his partners before having sex with them. He had sex numerous times with three different women. He didn‟t tell them he was HIV positive. Most of the time, he used no protection, but on a few occasions he withdrew before ejaculating; and he gave one of the women an anti-AIDS drug, “to slow down the AIDS.” None of the women contracted the HIV virus.12. A woman met a very drunk man in a bar. He got in her car; she drove him to her house. He asked her for a spoon, which she knew he wanted to take drugs with; she got it for him. She waited in the living room while he went into the bathroom to “shoot up.” He came back into the living room, and collapsed; sh e went back to the bar. The next morning she found him “purple, with flies flying around him.” Thinking he was dead, she told her daughter to call the police, and left for work. He was dead.13. A young man played the online video game “Border Patrol” on h is home computer. The game showed immigrants running across the border where a sign reads, “Welcome to the U.S. Welfare office this way.” There are three kinds of targets: Mexican nationalists, drug smugglers, and “breeders” (pregnant women with children). The game says …kill them at any cost‟. When you hit a “target,” it explodes into bits with appropriate visual and audio effects. At the end of the game, it gives a score with a derogatory term (Branson 2006; I played the game.).14. A 22-year old plumber‟s apprentice, while working on a sewer pipe in a trench 10 feet deep, is buried alive under a rush of collapsing muck and mud. He doesn‟t die easily. He claws for the surface. Sludge fills his throat. Thousands of pounds of dirt press on his chest, squeezi ng and squeezing until he can‟t draw another breath. He works for a plumbing company with a long record of safety violations. Only two weeks before, a federal safety investigator had caught men from the same company working unprotected in a 15-foot-deep trench, a clear violation of federal safety laws. On that day, the dead apprentice, who, when questioned by the investigator, described many unsafe work practices. The investigator knows the company well. Some years earlier, he‟d investigated another death at the company. The circumstances were nearly identical: a deep trench, no box, a man buried alive (Barstow 2003).15. A young waiter in an upscale restaurant is addicted to crystal meth, which “everyone” knows.16. A criminal justice major smokes marijuana on weekends.17. A man in his mid-20s dances nude in a local bar. A sign outside the bar reads: “Gay male strippers inside. Adults welcome.”“WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT?”The vignettes you just read are real cases; you‟ll read more about them in later cha pters. Here, we‟ll use them to introduce you to the government practice of “blaming and punishing” (Kadish 1998, 951) people for crimes. The approach in this book is to explore and think critically about the answers to the question criminal law always boil s down to, “Who‟s responsible for what?” (Dubber 2002, 5) Or, as the lawyers ask, “Who‟s liable for what?” There are other questionswe‟ll explore in the book, but they all flow from this one, or at least you have to know the answers to them in order to answer the responsibility question. One other point about the vignettes and criminal law: The questions are easy to ask, but hard to answer for reasons that we‟ll explore throughout the book.So, now you can start learning about criminal law, as we‟ll appro ach the subject in the book. First, put each vignette into one of the five categories listed below. Don‟t worry too much about what you already know about criminal law. In fact, try to ignore what you already know; just choose the category you believe the vignette should be in. Then, without reading further, try to explain why you put them in the categories you chose.1. Crime. If you put the vignette into this category, grade it as very serious, serious, or minor thereby stamping it with both the amount of disgrace (stigma) that a convicted “criminal” should suffer, and roughly the severity of the punishment you think it deserves .2. Non criminal wrong. A wrong that justifies suing someone and getting money. In other words, put a price that the wrongdoer has to pay to another individual, but don‟t put the stamp of “criminal” on it (Coffee 1992, 1876-7).3. Regulation. Government action to discourage the behavior, like a heavy cigarette tax to discourage smoking (Harcourt 2005, 11-12, insightful and stimula ting “Carceral Imaginations”). In other words, make the price for it high, but don‟t stamp it with the stigma of “crime.”4. License. Charge a price for it, like a driver‟s license fee for the privilege to drive. Don‟t try to encourage or discourage it. M ake the price affordable, and attach no stigma to it.5. Lawful. No legal consequences, but individual conscience and/or group (social) disapproval should/may condemn it.Now that you‟ve put them in the categories you did, consider this definition of cri minal liability: “conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests” (American Law Institute, hereafter ALI, Model Penal Code, hereafter MPC 1985, § 1.02(1)(a)). Try to match up the vignettes with each word and phrase in the definition.Here‟s a breakdown of the words and phrases in the definition; each one represents fundamental requirements of criminal law:Conduct thatUnjustifiably and inexcusably Inflicts or threatens substantial harm To individual or public interests。