University Law Assignment 4: Elements of Crimes and Parties to Crimes

This assignment addresses key concepts in criminal law, focusing on the elements of crimes and the parties involved. It defines essential terms such as accessories, accomplices, causation, intent, possession, and specific/general intent. The assignment explores questions related to negligence, the duty of care, and the justification for punishing careless acts. It examines defenses, like contributory negligence and assumption of risk, and discusses the role of intent in criminal liability, including strict liability and transferred intent. The document analyzes scenarios involving breach of duty, standard of care, and the application of criminal codes, providing a comprehensive overview of the legal principles governing criminal acts and accountability.

Running head: ASSIGNMENT 4
ASSIGNMENT 4
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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ASSIGNMENT 4
1. A person who intentionally helps someone who has committed an arrestable crime.
2. A person who provokes or supports another to commit an arrestable crime.
3. A person is accompanying another in wrongdoing.
4. Law imposes a duty, and the accused breached in fulfilling the same.
5. In actual possession a person has direct or physical control over an item and other
thing.
6. An administrative type act is a federal statute that dictates how an administrative
agency can construct regulations.
7. Aiding is helping to commit a crime and abetting is instigating in the commencement
of a crime.
8. The action of causing some. In law, there are two types of causation 1. Cause-in-fact
and proximate.
9. Constructive intent arises when the person committing a crime does not have the
mens rea to commit it but the consequences of the act are foreseeable.
10. Constructive possession is used to describe a possession where a person has a definite
control over property or chattels without any physical control over it.
11. The transferred intent doctrine held a person guilty of committing a crime, which he
intended to commit against one but wrongfully committed against another.
12. General intent crime does not require any mental condition beyond the will to commit
a crime. It generally means, the person while committing a crime did not think of its
significances and how they would affect others.
13. General-intent statue is a branch of criminal law that punishes the intention or mens
rea of a person while committing a crime.

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14. The motive is an element that needs to prove before holding a person guilty of a
criminal offence. It can be referred to as a cause that forces people to commit a
particular act.
15. Possession in legal parlance means where a person holds or be in authority over a
thing it can be actual, real or apparent. Possession over something can exist in fact
and in law.
16. Principles are those legal rules and guidelines of law that states the literal meaning of
the words used in a statute.
17. Proximate cause is an event, which causes or instigates the happening of an injury. In
other words, proximate cause is the reason for which the injury took place.
18. Specific intent in law refers to that intent where a person deliberately commits a crime
with the intention of producing a particular result while committing it.
19. Specific-intent statue is a branch of criminal law that punishes the deliberate intention
of a person while committing a crime.
20. Status in legal parlance refers to the legal privileges, obligations, powers and
restrictions in contrast with law.
Q1:
A person’s mere act of carelessness, as opposed to willfulness which causes harm to
another, is referred to as negligence misconduct by a person. In criminal law, criminal
negligence is a separate crime where a person committing the wrong ignores the obvious risk
associated with the crime. The person may have knowledge that such ignorance of him or her
might cause life risk or injury to another person (R v Bateman). The amount of culpability in
cases of criminal negligence is determined by applying a reasonable or prudent

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person’s standard of seeing the risk allied with an act. Therefore, it is punishable in those
cases where a person obeys a duty of care towards others but by mere carelessness, they
failed to obey the same.
Q2:
In the eyes of the law, defences are available for the failure to perform a moral duty of
care by a person, which he or she owes towards another. The defences are,
 Contributory negligence: Where the plaintiff’s own negligent or careless act caused
injury to his or her life, then the plaintiff cannot sue the defendant for breach of duty
of care (Douglas v. Harris).
 Assumption of risk: When the plaintiff had knowledge about the risk associated with
an act, still performs the same negligently, cannot held the defendant liable for breach
of duty (Beninati v. Black Rock City, LLC).
Q3:
No, moral integrity does no put at sake when a person has been convinced for an
offence without any criminal intent. This is because a person can be held liable in such a
situation only when he owes a strict liability against the victim. In strict liability, a person
owes a standard duty of care for the well-being of another person and due to such
disobedience if another suffers, then he duty owing person can be held liable in the eyes of
the law (Rylands v Fletcher).
Q4:
No, it is not valid to act as an accessory in hiding the crime committed by a close
family member because such an act would be punishable as obstruction of justice under the

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title 18 of US Code deals with crimes and criminal procedure (Moser & Weitz, 2018).
However, there are some defences that are available to a person as a supportive claim
defending the close relative’s criminal act for whom he or she is acting as an accessory. This
is lack of knowledge, provocation, duress, ignorance of the law, insanity or infancy,
entrapment.
Q5:
In this case, Fred can be held guilty of breach of duty of care and standard of care,
which he owes as a supervisor to each and every student in the boys camp. As per the duty of
care rule, when a person owes a duty of care to another person, which might cause injury to
the life of another person, he or she can be held liable in case of breach (Smoldon v
Whitworth & Nolan, 1997). However, in this case, Fred owes a duty of standard of care to his
students as a profession (Haynes v Harwood, 1935). Similarly, he was aware of the fact that
the student does not know swimming (Donoghue v Stevenson, 1932). Therefore, he can be
held liable under breach of standard duty of care, breach of reasonable foreseeability test.
Q6:
In this case, Alice Alpha can be held guilty of committing attempted murder to
Benjamin Beta and murder to Gerry Gamma as per the provisions of the Title 18 of the US
Criminal Code (Broughton, 2017). In this case, the doctrine of transferred intention will also
be applicable, as the intention of Alpha was to kill Beta, but due to poor target and
overcrowded place, the bullet killed Gamma.

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Reference:
Beninati v. Black Rock City, LLC, 175 Cal. App. 4th 650
Broughton, J. R. (2017). Hate Crimes, the Death Penalty, and Criminal Justice Reform.
Hamline J. Pub. L. & Pol'y, 37, 185.
Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, 580
Douglas v. Harris (1961), 35 N.J. 270, 281, 173 A.2d 1
Haynes v Harwood [1935] 1 KB 146, CA
Moser, S., & Weitz, J. (2018). 18 USC Sec. 1348-A Workhorse Statute for Prosecutors. US
Att'ys Bull., 66, 111.
R v Bateman (1925) 19 Cr App R 8
Rylands v Fletcher [1868] UKHL 1
Smoldon v Whitworth & Nolan [1997] PIQR P133, CA