criminal offense essays

criminal offense essays 1. Persons charged with a criminal offence can raise a number of defenses ranging from denial of the prohibited act to claiming defenses based upon a lack of capacity to form the criminal intent. Clarify the concept of criminal culpability by examining any three of the following defenses: automatism, insanity, self-defense, intoxication, duress. There are many people in this world that are always looking for a chance to kill someone or injure someone. People will do anything for revenge or for their own benefits. Some may do it intentionally and others without being in the correct state of mind. But how do we really know if they are in their correct state of mind or not? Don't you think everyone that commits a crime should be punished? People that are charged with a criminal offence can raise a number of defenses ranging denial of the prohibited act to claiming defenses based upon a lack of capacity to form the criminal intent. No matter what the defense is, whether it is intoxication, self-defence or insanity the person must face the charges. Intoxication is similar to the defences of automatism and mental disorder. Their similarity concerns the accused person's state of mind when the offence was committed. People can be so intoxicated that they do not know what their bodies are doing but still be physically capable of harming someone. At such behaviour, questions arise relating to the voluntary nature of the accused's actions. About four hundred years ago self-induced intoxication was rejected as a defence to criminal actions. It was stated in Reniger v. Fogassa that "if a person that kills another, this shall be felony, and he shall be hanged for it, and yet he did it through ignorance, for when he was drunk he had no understanding nor memory; but inasmuch as that ignorance was occasioned by his own act and folly, and he might have avoided it, he shall not be priviledged thereby." Until 1994, under the Leary rulin ...