CRMJ 2210 Criminal Law- Types of Inchoate Crimes

1. Name the types of inchoate crimes, and explain why they are called inchoate crimes. 

2. Name and explain different defenses to show that the actor did not have the mental ability to form the necessary intent to commit a crime. 

3. What are the two elements of every crime and explain what they are. 

Answers

1. There are three types of inchoate crimes in the American law system which are,

• Attempt is closer to inchoate crimes which generally carry out crime. Challenges or threats come under the attempt to commit the crime.
• Solicitation is crime where asks to other person for committing the crime (Dressler, 2015).
• Conspiracy is where individual agrees to carry out the crime.

These are considered as inchoate crimes as these crimes are incomplete by nature. The individual generally stops before committing the crime or targeted offence. So, it becomes typical to charge a person with both target offence as inchoate crimes in same situation or time.

2. There are various types of defences where individual has not mental ability to commit the crime as,

• Mental disorder or insanity defence is where actor is lacking to understand negative impact for offensive conduct or inability of actor for conforming conduct according to criminal law.
• Automatism defence is where there is no control over mind or lack in consciousness of the actor.
• Intoxication defence is where neglect of mens rea occurs in specific cases. Voluntarily and involuntarily defences come under the intoxication (Cole et al, 2015). This defence mainly denies mens rea for committing the offence.
• Diminished responsibility is where actor is not liable to answer on criminal charges due to mental conditions and charges are reduced because of manslaughter.
• Infanticide where actor kills infant due to their sexual orientation towards boy infant.
• Self induced capacity is where actor is found of taking drugs due to some illness or some other concern comes under defence.

3. There are mainly two elements associated with the criminal offences that are mental element for intention to conduct the crime or guilty mind and prohibited conduct (Keating, 2014). If the crime is not comes under the offence of strict liability then these two elements of crimes needs to be considered for prosecuting the individual or person.

Under the prohibited conduct, if an individual intentionally or without following the laws strikes other individual without his consent, then it comes under the assault and offensive conduct. Then this element will be used in such scenarios or cases (Werle and Florian, 2014). This is also called as actus reus in American law system. In this, unlawful emission or criminal act needs to be occurred and person without criminal thinking cannot be accused or punished under the law. Conspiracy, solicitation, perjury or threats are some crimes which are come under this element of the crime.

Similarly, mental element for intention to conduct the crime or guilty mind is also called as mens rea in the American law system. This is one of the most important elements of crime where crime needs to be purposeful or voluntary by nature (Dressler, 2015). This is generally considered as the mind state or mental intention to commit the crime. In this generally the actor not cares about the ultimate consequences of their offensive conduct or crime.

References:

Cole, F., Christopher E., and Christina D. Criminal justice in America.USA: Cengage Learning, 2015.

Dressler, J. Black Letter Outline on Criminal Law. USA: West Academic, 2015.

Keating, H. Criminal law: text and materials.USA: Sweet & Maxwell, 2014.

Werle, G., and Florian J. Principles of international criminal law.UK: OUP Oxford, 2014.