Criminal Law Before 1L: Crimes Against the Person, Intimate Crimes, and Crimes Against Property

» 📘 VIEW THE COMPANION STUDY GUIDE 📘 [💡FREE💡] «▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬EPISODE SUMMARYCriminal Law includes crimes against the person, sexual offenses, and property crimes, each with precise elements.Battery is the unlawful application of force resulting in bodily injury or offensive touching. Assault may mean attempted battery or intentionally placing another in apprehension of imminent bodily harm. Aggravated assault or battery may involve deadly weapons, serious injury, special intent, or protected victims. Mayhem historically involved malicious disabling or disfigurement. Kidnapping involves unlawful confinement or movement, with modern limits when movement is incidental to another crime.Common-law rape traditionally required intercourse by force and without consent, but modern sexual-offense statutes vary widely. They may focus on consent, coercion, incapacity, age, threats, authority, and different forms of sexual conduct. Statutory rape involves sexual conduct with a person below the age of consent; mistake-of-age rules vary.Property crimes require exact element matching. Larceny is trespassory taking and carrying away of personal property of another with intent to permanently deprive. Embezzlement involves lawful possession followed by fraudulent conversion. False pretenses involves obtaining title by fraud. Larceny by trick involves obtaining possession by fraud. Robbery is larceny from the person or presence by force or threat of immediate force. Extortion involves obtaining property through threats, often of future harm.Burglary at common law is breaking and entering the dwelling of another at night with intent to commit a felony inside. Arson is malicious burning of the dwelling of another. Modern statutes often expand both offenses. Receiving stolen property requires receiving or controlling property known to be stolen. Forgery involves falsely making or altering a legally significant writing with intent to defraud; uttering is offering a forged instrument as genuine.The key lesson is precision. Criminal Law does not ask generally whether the defendant behaved badly. It asks whether the prosecution can prove every element of the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt.