Criminal law

“ This account of the considerations which have regulated the punishment of crimes explains the severity with which 'criminal negligence' is in some cases punished, and that severity is justified by the account given of the true principle of criminal law, the principle, viz., that crime should be punished according to the importance of the right which it violates, and to the degree of terror which in a well-organised society needs to be associated with the crime in order to the protection of the right. ”

“ In order to secure an accurate conception of the legal system, the early growth of which it is proposed to examine, it may be well to premise that the criminal law, which with a substantial uniformity of cardinal ideas now prevails in all civilized states, is well defined as "that branch of juridical law treating of those wrongs which the government notices as injurious to the public, and punishes by what is called a criminal proceeding, in its own name." ”

“ Within the domain of private law the division which calls for primary recognition is that between civil and criminal law. Civil law is that which is concerned with the enforcement of rights, while criminal law is concerned with the punishment of wrongs. We have examined and rejected the opinion that crimes are essentially offences against the state or the community at large, while civil wrongs are committed against private persons. ”

“ When we speak of the repression of crime, we must first of all distinguish between that which is due to the general character of penal legislation, more or less severe, and that which is secured by the administration by the judges of the law as it is. ”

“ The distinction also between civil and criminal law requires explanation. Nearly all criminal law is founded on statutes, in other words the statutes, state and federal, define nearly all legal crimes known to society. ”

“ The complicated process of criminal justice is therefore divided into different parts, responsibility for which is separately vested in the various participants upon whom the criminal law relies for its vindication. ”

“ In this connection, one of our country's distinguished jurists has pointed out: "The quality of a nation's civilization can be largely measured by the methods it uses in the enforcement of its criminal law." ”

“ This does well enough for the purpose of illustrating the relative proportion of crimes to torts or wrongful acts in general, and, if a tiny dot be placed in the centre of the bull's-eye to represent those crimes which are actually punished, one gets an excellent idea of how infinitely small a number of these serve to keep the whole social fabric in order and sustain the majesty of the law. ”

“ Next comes the “délit,” which includes all offences punished by imprisonment over a week and under five years. Then, finally, we arrive at the “crime,” the highest form of offence in French criminal law. It includes all offences subject to a more severe sentence than the punishment assigned to a délit. All cases are held to be crimes where death, life-imprisonment with or without hard labour, deportation out of the kingdom, detention or seclusion in a fortress or other expressly assigned place, are the punishments mentioned by the law. ”

“ Our decisions under that Amendment have made clear that convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: ”

“ The penal code and the code of criminal procedure that have replaced it attempt to ensure that criminals are not able to evade the penalties provided for in the law but, at the same time, there is a stated guarantee against the arrest, trial, or conviction of innocent persons. ”

“ As a Professor of Jurisprudence reminds us, "the object of the whole complicated system of checks and guards provided by English law, and secured by a long train of constitutional conflicts, has been to prevent an innocent man being even momentarily treated as a thief, a murderer, or other criminal, on the mere alleged or real suspicion of a policeman." ”

“ Your criminal, that is to say, strictly, the law-breaker who is brought to book for his offence, is very likely a pretty good sort of fellow as fellows go. If he has been guilty merely of an act which is prohibited, not because of its inherent wrong, but simply on grounds of public policy—malum prohibitum—he is probably as good as anybody. ”

“ No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous
crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in
cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in
actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be
subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or
limb, nor shall be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness
against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use,
without just compensation. ”

“ We cannot but doubt the perfection of our criminal code, when we see that almost every criminal eludes the law, either by boldly avowing the crime, or by the tardiness with which legal prosecutions are carried on, or, lastly, by the convenient application of bail in criminal cases. ”

“ The chief of these principles relating to criminal law were that law can only forbid actions that are harmful to society, and must only impose penalties that are strictly necessary. To these epoch-making pronouncements the Assembly added, in 1790, that crimes should be visited only on the guilty individual, not on the family ”

“ The crime will always be the object of punitive law, even under the positive system of procedure; but, instead of being the exclusive concern of the judge it will only be the ground of procedure, and one symptom amongst others of the depravation and re-adaptability of the criminal, who will himself be the true and living subject of the trial. ”

“ The careless nurse is a criminal and may be confined in a penitentiary; while perhaps a man who may be guilty of a great iniquity and known to be so drives nonchalantly off in his coach and four.
What is crime? We may well ask the question, only eventually to be confronted by that illuminating definition with which begins the Penal Code—"A crime is an act or omission forbidden by law and punishable upon conviction by ... ”

“ A criminal prosecution directed on European criminal procedure at once passes into the hands of the state as an infringement of law which must be repressed, on the ground that the whole community bases its security on obedience to law. In England the repression of all minor crime is left to the injured party. ”

“ Criminal Cases are prosecutions or proceedings by the State or Federal government to enforce the laws made for the preservation of peace, law, and order in the community, by the imposition of fines, or imprisonment, or the punishment of death, in case of their violation. ”

“ Notwithstanding there is a difference in the adjudicated cases upon this subject, we think the better doctrine recognizes that, although the transaction may be in a sense continuous, the offenses are separate, and each complete in itself. This is the result of the authorities as stated in Mr. Bishop in his new work on Criminal Law, 8th ed.:
'If in the night a man breaks and enters a dwelling house to steal therein, and steals, he may be punished for the two offenses or one, at the election of the prosecuting power. ”

“ These observations regard principally more heinous offences; but if the effect of the criminal code be found to be, that it operates more for the punishment than the prevention of crime, what would be the state of society, if the civil law was our great guide in transactions between man and man. ”

“ This is the point from which we start; each indictment is now a bill of pains and penalties, a special law naming the criminal and prescribing his punishment. A second step is accomplished, when the multiplicity of crimes compels the legislature to delegate its powers to particular Quæstiones or Commissions, each of which is deputed to investigate a particular accusation, and if it be proved, to punish the particular offender. ”

“ The object of this paper is to charge the accused with the greatest crime that his criminal act can be construed to fit; for it is a greater renown to the player for the state to hang his man than to have him sentenced to penal service. And the prosecuting attorney must so draw this paper that it will not be subject to any controlling technical objection that the counsel for the prisoner may be able to find in the record of any criminal trial running back through all the law books to the reports of the King's Bench. ”

“ Criminal attempts constitute, as we have seen, the first of the exceptions to the rule that a person’s ulterior intent or motive is irrelevant in law. A second exception comprises all those cases in which a particular intent forms part of the definition of a criminal offence. Burglary, for example, consists in breaking and entering a dwelling-house by night with intent to commit a felony therein. ”

“ Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal, and punishes such action; (2) every law that aggravates a crime or makes it greater than it was when committed; (3) every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed ”

“ In this connection, Lombroso has drawn a clear distinction between two varieties of occasional criminals: the ``pseudo-criminals,'' or normal human beings who commit involuntary offences, or offences which do not spring from perversity, and do not hurt society, though they are punishable by law, and ``criminaloids,'' who commit ordinary offences, but differ from true criminals for the reasons already given. ”

“ Our government comprises, therefore, not only a law-making branch and a law-enforcing branch, but also a LAW-INTERPRETING, OR JUDICIAL, branch—the courts.
THE RIGHTS OF ACCUSED PERSONS The Constitution guarantees justice to persons accused of violating the property rights, or other rights of citizens, by theft, fraud, or otherwise, as well as to the citizen who has been wronged. "In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed ... ”

“ Practical men declare that ``the prohibitive penal law ought to be regarded as the first and most important of preventive laws.'' The prfets in their circulars, being concerned about the increase of crime, put forward the most vigilant and severe repression as a sovereign remedy. ”

“ The law, authorising an appeal to the highest judicature in criminal matters only, shows an attention to personal security, rendered the more obligatory by the extreme severity of their penal code, which would naturally have made them more cautious of a wrong conviction. ”

“ In the first place, a criminal statute that is so ambiguous in scope that an interpretation of it brings about totally unexpected results, thereby subjecting people to penalties and punishments for conduct which they could not know was criminal under existing law, raises serious questions of unconstitutional vagueness. ”

“ The outer circle represents wrongful acts in the aggregate; the second, wrongful acts held by law to be torts, that is to say, infractions of private rights for which redress may be sought in the civil courts, and the smallest or inner circle, acts held to be so injurious to the public as to be punishable as crimes. ”

“ The criminal laws have been so carefully framed and so admirably expounded for the benefit of the lawyers and their clients, the malefactors, that a very large proportion of American murderers escape the proper penalty of their acts ”

“ And society's awareness of the heavy personal strain which a criminal trial represents for the individual defendant is manifested in the willingness to limit the Government to a single criminal proceeding to vindicate its very vital interest in enforcement of criminal laws. ”

“ But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. ”

“ It might be supposed that communities thus familiarized with the punishment of crime by public authority would rapidly develop a criminal jurisprudence by the simple and direct process of adding from time to time new crimes, perhaps in the order of their supposed enormity, to their catalogue of offenses. ”