Principal (criminal law)

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our criminal code, artificial and indiscriminating as it is, is the growth of ages and is the result of the notion that society ought to take vengeance upon the criminal, at least that it ought to punish him, and that the judge, the interpreter of the criminal law, was not only the proper person to determine the guilt of the accused, by the aid of the jury, but was the sole person to judge of the amount of punishment he should receive for his crime. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The criminal law which had its origin when violence was rife is admirably adapted to the prevention, prosecuting and punishment of crude crimes, such as arson, rape, robbery, burglary, mayhem, assault, homicide, and "common-law" larceny,—theft accompanied by a trespass. In old times everything was against the man charged with crime—at least that was the attitude of the court and jury. "Aha!" exclaims the judge as the evidence goes in. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a person be charged with the commission of murder, piracy, arson, robbery, or forgery within the United States of America, and ‘charged upon such evidence of criminality as according to the law of the place where the fugitive or person so charged shall be found would justify his apprehension and commitment for trial, if the crime or offence had been there committed,’ he may be apprehended, and his case is to be heard, and considered. ”

“ The Constitution of the United States and of every State has made it a part of the fundamental law of the land that "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. A felony is an infamous crime. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ If in such cases, or in any case of a civil nature, it is the policy of the law to visit upon the offender such exemplary damages as will operate as punishment, and teach the lesson of caution to prevent a repetition of criminality, yet we do not see how such damages can be allowed, where the principal is prosecuted for the tortious act of his servant, unless there is proof in the cause to implicate the principal and make him particeps criminis of his agent's act. ”

“ The Government's whole argument rests on the stark premise that Congress has left to the district attorney or the Attorney General the power to say whether the judge and jury must punish identical conduct as a felony or as a misdemeanor.
A basic principle of our criminal law is that the Government only prosecutes people for crimes under statutes passed by Congress which fairly and clearly define the conduct made criminal and the punishment which can be administered. ”

“ Causes, in which money is claimed for damage or for debt, are called civil causes; those for the trial of persons charged with crime, or some misdemeanor, are called criminal causes. All crimes, strictly speaking, are misdemeanors. In common usage, however, the word misdemeanor denotes a smaller offense, such as is usually punishable by fine, or by imprisonment in a county jail, and not in a state prison. Causes, actions, and suits, are words of similar meaning in law language, being generally used to signify prosecutions at law, or lawsuits. The party that sues is called plaintiff ”

“ Section 19 of the Criminal Code condemns as a criminal offense any conspiracy to injure a citizen in the exercise 'of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States'. Section 20 makes it a penal offense for anyone who, 'acting under color of any law' 'willfully subjects, or causes to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State * * * to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States'. ”

“ Abolition of distinction between felony and misdemeanour. 1.— (1) All distinctions between felony and misdemeanour are hereby abolished.
(2) Subject to the provisions of this Act, on all matters on which a distinction has previously been made between felony and misdemeanour, including mode of trial, the law and practice in relation to all offences cognisable under the law of England and Wales (including piracy) shall be the law and practice applicable at the commencement of this Act in relation to misdemeanour. ”

“ The Government suggests seriousness of the crime as a test and says the statute is one by which it is 'sought to reach the confirmed criminal, whose criminality has been revealed in two serious penal offenses.' (Italics supplied.) But we cannot, and the Court does not, take seriousness as a test of turpitude. All offenses denounced by Congress, prosecuted by the Executive, and convicted by the courts, must be deemed in some degree 'serious' or law enforcement would be a frivolous enterprise. ”

“ It would be exaltation of technical precision to an unwarranted degree to say that the indictment here did not inform petitioner that he was charged with substantial elements of the crime of larceny thereby enabling him, as a means of cutting his sentence in half, to agree to plead guilty to an attempted larceny. Procedural requirements are essential constitutional safeguards in our system of criminal law. These safeguards should constantly and vigilantly be observed to afford those accused of crime every fair opportunity to defend themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Assuming that the house had been burglarized, the officer beyond a doubt had reasonable cause for a hastily formed opinion that the man in the area was the guilty party and had a right to make the arrest, but in law he makes this assumption at his peril. If he is wrong the victim has a good cause of action against the policeman for false arrest. ”

“ By the law of England, informations by the attorney general, without the intervention of a grand jury, were not allowed for capital crimes, nor for any felony, by which was understood any offense which at common law occasioned a total forfeiture of the offender's lands or goods, or both. ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ Such a rule is utterly without foundation in logic or reason from the simple fact that crime in every age has been committed with every circumstance of caution and concealment that criminal ingenuity could devise; usually under the cover of night, often with a mask, frequently by the aid of accomplices to give notice of the appearance of the officers of the law, and nearly always with subsequent attempts to wipe out evidences of the commission of the offense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ That in order to enable them to apply the evidence to the several parts of the charge, it would be proper for him first to acquaint them how the law determines in cases of this nature; that with regard to the persons [107] charged as principals, wherever several persons agree together to commit a murder, or any other felony, and the murder or felony is actually committed, every person present aiding and abetting is, in the eye of the law, guilty in the same degree, and liable to the same punishment as he who actually committed the fact. ”

“ But while deference is due state legislatures and courts in defining crimes, this deference has constitutional limits. In the case of a compound crime such as felony murder, in which one crime must be proven in order to prove the other, the underlying crime must, as a matter of law, be a lesser included offense of the greater. ”

“ An accessory before or after the fact of felony may be prosecuted and tried not only if the principal accused felon has been convicted, but even if he stood mute or peremptorily challenged over 20 persons to serve on the jury. The accessories shall be punished the same as if the principal had been attainted. Buyers and receivers of stolen goods may be prosecuted and punished if they knew the goods to be stolen, even if the principal felon has not been convicted. The punishment will be as for misdemeanor by fine and imprisonment. ”

“ IN DEFENSE OF THE KENNISTONS BY DANIEL WEBSTER Gentlemen of the Jury,—It is true that the offense charged in the indictment in this case is not capital; but perhaps this can hardly be considered as favorable to the defendants. To those who are guilty, and without hope of escape, no doubt the lightness of the penalty of transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants are innocent, it is more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by that alteration of the law which has left highway robbery no longer capital, than what the guilty might gain by it. ”

“ It is not an assertion of the right on the part of the government always recognized under English and American law, to search the person of the accused when legally arrested, to discover and seize the fruits or evidences of crime. ”

“ The only question before us is whether the police court had jurisdiction. A habeas corpus proceeding cannot be made to perform the function of a writ of error, and we are not concerned with the question whether the information was sufficient, or whether the acts set forth in the agreed statement constituted a crime, that is to say, whether the court properly applied the law, if it be found that the court had jurisdiction to try the issues and to render the judgment. ”

“ I would hold that the fact of arrest supplies such an exigent circumstance, since the police had lawfully gained entry to the premises to effect the arrest and since delaying the search to secure a warrant would have involved the risk of not recovering the fruits of the crime.
The majority today proscribes searches for which there is probable cause and which may prove fruitless unless carried out immediately. This rule will have no added effect whatsoever in protecting the rights of the criminal accused at trial against introduction of evidence seized without probable cause. ”