Creating Criminal Responsibility within Criminal Groups

Criminal Responsibility

are not always evident to the man in the street and are particularly easy to neglect when involved in the highly sensational atmosphere of a murder trial; this is of course particularly so if the details are horrific or sexual or both and if a plea of insanity is raised in defence. It may therefore be helpful to re-state the points at issue. The first point is that lawyers and doctors talk in d...

Criminal Responsibility

the definition of a crime has never yet been clearly made. A crime has been described as a result of human conduct, which it is the policy of the governing power in the state to prevent. Usually it is followed by a punishment , but this was not always so. In early years, suffering was imposed on the wrongdoer, and in Roman times expiation was necessary to placate the offended gods. That which d...

Amnesia and criminal responsibility

INTRODUCTION Under common law, criminal responsibility usually distinguishes between intentional act and accident, andmost serious criminal offenses consist of both a voluntary act and a guilty mind.1 This treatment presumes that no defendant should be held criminally responsible without a finding of fault. Despite this long-standing conceptual commitment to fairness, criminal law continues to ...

Intoxication and Criminal Responsibility

On Criminal Responsibility

\ The records of our criminal jurisprudence are fertile in instances in which the most atrocious crimes are perpetrated 1^ persons who are absolved from responsibility on the ground of insanity. The mind is horrified at the tale of a mother cutting the throats of her helpless infants as they lie slumbering in their beds, or of another parent hurrying away her progeny in the darkness of the nigh...