SCENARIO FOR VOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER
Rick and Megan have been married for six years, but are not able to conceive a child. Family and friends pressure them to start a family already because they are not getting any younger. Rick’s friends constantly tease him about it and the jokes are beginning to get to him. Megan, on the other hand, is getting bored with the marriage. She turns to Rick’s best friend Jake for advice and company. She finds him fun and a relief from Rick’s rather serious nature. The two begin to see each other more often and this develops into a serious and intimate relationship. One day, Rick leaves his work earlier than expected because he does not feel well. He finds Jake and his wife having sex on the matrimonial bed. He immediately gets his gun from the drawer near the bed and shoots Jake who dies on the spot.
SCENARIO FOR KIDNAPPING
Leo has been a loyal employee of James, the owner of a big construction company in Los Angeles, California, for two decades. James promised Leo that his loyalty will be amply rewarded in time and he will make him a partner in his business. However, years passed and Leo has been bypassed several times in promotion. Leo asks James about his promise, but James often tells him to wait for the right time. One day, James announced that he has offered George, a much younger executive of the company, a partnership of the business because he is impressed with his credentials and performance. In anger, Leo hires his cousin Benjamin to take James’ only daughter Kate and bring her to Portland in Oregon so that they could force James to pay ransom. Benjamin seizes Kate from the university where she is studying against her will and brings her to Oregon.
CAUSATION AND JOINDER IN CRIMINAL OFFENSES
Causation is an element required in certain criminal offenses to justify a finding of guilt. For example, the offense of homicide requires that the death of the victim is the result of the act of the defendant. Causation is either actual, which is determined by the ‘but for’ test, or proximate. Proximate cause is also called legal causation and is defined as “a cause that in natural, continuous sequence, unbroken by any intervening causes, produces the consequences that occur” (cited in Schebb 110). In some instances, actual causation is sufficient, but in others where intervening events come into play, proximate causation is resorted to. Thus, if A shoots B and the latter dies on the spot, factual causation alone can establish the guilt of A, but if A shoots B and B, mortally wounded, was taken to a hospital where the staff was negligent in treating him and he dies, then proximate causation may be used instead.
The joinder of act and intent is a common law theory of crime. It means that the mens rea and actus reus must exist at the same for a person to be found guilty of a crime. It does not matter, however, if the mens rea occurred long before the actus reus. It is sufficient that at one point in time, the two met and existed together. Thus, if A planned to kill B on Monday, but decided not to pursue it on Tue, but on Wednesday while cleaning his gun discharged it accidentally, which hit B and killed the latter – A is not guilty because the act and the intent never existed together at the same time (Wallace and Robertson 53).
FALSE IMPRISONMENT, FELONOIUS RSTRAINT AND KIDNAPPING: DIFFERENCES
All three terms share the element of absence of consent on the part of the victim as well as the act of curtailing a person from his or her right of movement. However, kidnapping involves transporting a person from one place to another and is committed to serve another goal, such as financial or political gain. False imprisonment does not involve the element of asportation although the victim is also held against his or her will (Carlan et al 67). Felonious restraint is more serious than false imprisonment because the victim is not only detained against his or her will, but the detention either exposes the latter to bodily harm or to voluntary servitude.
Works Cited
Carlan, Philip and Lisa Nored, Ragan Downey. An Introduction to Criminal Law, 2011. Jones & Bartlett Publishing. Print.
Schebb, John. Criminal Law. Cengage Learning, 2014. Print.
Wallace, Harvey and Cliff Robertson. Principles of Criminal Law. 4th ed. Allyn and Bacon, 2008. Print.
