Criminal Law and Procedure: A Courtroom Approach
Chapter Summaries
Chapter 12 examines the basic defenses in criminal law and how they operate to relieve a criminal actor from certain specific punishment under the law. The Chapter-Opening Case Study is an excerpt from the U.S. Supreme Court case Hall v. Florida (2014) to expose the tension between crediting the heinous childhood suffered by offenders with the heinous crimes the offenders commit. Discussion is had about how affirmative defenses are raised and the attendant burden (pp. 347–348); the complete defenses of alibi and statute of limitations (pp. 348–349); a look at a defendant’s competency and the legal requirements of forcibly restoring a defendant to competency (pp. 349–350); the defenses based on excuse (“I did it, but there’s a good reason”) such as consent (p. 350); mistake (p. 351) similar to the defense of impossibility raised in the discussion of attempt crimes in Chapter 3); infancy (pp. 351–352); intoxication and duress (pp. 352–353) with the Erie, PA, pizza bomber used as an example; and the mens rea–type defenses such as diminished capacity and the many tests and permutations of the insanity defense (pp. 354–357); as distinguished from intellectual disability (pp. 357–360) including the case excerpt of Moore v. Texas (2017) where the High Court rejected determining disability by reference to popular culture stereotypes rather than medical reference. Making the Courtroom Connection illuminates the special considerations criminal justice professionals must consider with mentally ill suspects, defendants, and convicted offenders (p. 360). The defenses based on justification (“I did it, but I had a good reason”) such as necessity (pp. 360–361); defense-based justifications of self, others, property with attendant issues of duty to retreat and lawfully stand your ground (pp. 361–363); the so-called battered woman syndrome illustrated by the power and control wheel and the case excerpt of PA v. Stonehouse (1989), where the state supreme court held counsel was ineffective for not introducing expert testimony on battering and its effects to overcome stereotypes in popular culture that work to the detriment of battering victims, such as he or she can leave their abuser at any time (pp. 363–369). The chapter ends with a discussion of the two tests for entrapment, objective, and subjective illustrated by the State v. Laing (2016) case excerpt of a young man trying to hook up with a high school girl who turned out to be a law enforcement officer (pp. 370–372).