3.3 Criminal Law Meeting 3 Part 3

We’ve been examining the doctrine of actus reus: the requirement of a voluntary act. The Martin case taught us that a bodily movement is not voluntary unless it is powered by the actor. It also taught us that as long as the actor moves under his own power the act counts as voluntary, even though he acts reluctantly or even under compulsion. Acting “unwillingly,” in the vernacular sense, is still acting voluntarily, in the legal sense. The Newton case told us that even a bodily movement initiated by the actor does not count as his act unless he was conscious while doing it.

00:50 - We explore further now, with the help of the case of People versus Decina. Decina is a note case on page 231 of the Kadish casebook (10th edition). It appears to be small but it has a lot to teach us. If this image looks blurry to you, it is. This is about how things would look to you with the onset of an epileptic seizure. Not only would your vision be impaired so also with your control over your limbs. You might even lose consciousness. The defendant Decina drove his car into four people, killing them. He was charged with a homicide offense under Maryland law. Evidently Decina had lost control of his Buick during an epileptic fit –he was quite possibly unconscious of the speed and direction of his car. How can he justly be convicted? A look at the statute is always our starting point. The statute reads, “a person who operates or drives any vehicle in a reckless or culpably negligent manner whereby a human being is killed is guilty of criminal negligence.” Let’s break it down into elements.

A person who “operates or drives” 02:16 - –well, Decina was driving. Let’s call this – following the Model Penal Code – the “conduct” element. Decina admits he was driving but denies that it was any longer a voluntary act. He was unconscious due to his epileptic seizure. The consequence was that people were killed. We can call this a “result” element. Maryland might make it a crime to drive negligently anyway, and then separately define a more serious crime that is committed when a person dies as a result. This is what this statute does.

Does the statute apply to a merely accidental death? 03:01 - It does not. The statute includes what we will call “culpability language” --drivers who kill are not convictable under this statute unless it is proved that they drove negligently or recklessly. The words “negligently” and “recklessly” add the so-called MENS REA dimension to the statute. We will come back to this in a moment. The puzzle is how Decina can be convicted under the statute if he was unconscious at the time of the accident. Let’s look back at the Model Penal Code: “A person is not guilty of an offense unless his liability is based on conduct which includes a voluntary act.” The key word here is “includes.

” 03:47 - The Model Penal Code defines the term “conduct,” conduct means “an action or a series of acts.” You might think this means that all the prosecution has to do in a case like Decina or Newton or even Martin is to show that the defendant performed some voluntary act. Each of the three defendants voluntarily got out of bed the morning of the crimes charged. So, in each case, the prosecution can prove conduct that includes a voluntary act. A sophistical law professor might go so far as to suggest that it’s simply a matter of enlarging the time frame.

04:29 - The answer to this was anticipated millennia ago and is expressed in the maxim ACTVS NON FACIT REVM NISI MENS SIT REVS, which means,” a forbidden act without a culpable mind is no crime.” This is the third and last of our most fundamental principles of criminal law. No punishment without a crime. No crime without a law. And no crime unless a forbidden act is done with a culpable mind. A crime consists of a combination of a forbidden act and a culpable mental state. Let’s visualize this using Lego blocks. The actus reus is a necessary element of every defined criminal offense, but not sufficient.

The criminal offense is not complete unless it includes the mental element, 05:29 - the mens rea. Moreover, mens rea must accompany and guide the actus reus, the conscious voluntary act. We can now appreciate why Decina can justly be convicted of criminal homicide. Decina is an unusual case. In a normal case of homicide, the prosecution charges that a death resulted from the defendant’s culpable and voluntary act. In Decina, the immediate cause of death was the defendant’s involuntary act: he was driving but was unconscious.

06:12 - That involuntary act was preceded by the voluntary act of getting into the car starting it and driving it on the highway. The defendant’s conduct, in brackets, includes a voluntary act. The prosecution has also to prove that the conduct was culpable in being reckless or negligent. However, culpability can only attach to a voluntary act. This is what it means for the culpable mind to combine with the forbidden act.

In Decina, the Court allows the prosecution to try to show 06:50 - that the defendant’s conscious voluntary act of driving onto the highway was culpable because he knew he was subject to having epileptic blackouts. Consider another case, Cogden, on pages 229 230 in Kadish. Cogden killed her daughter with an axe. Her defense was that she was unconscious when she struck the blows. The defense was successful. The prosecution could not show a voluntary act performed with a culpable mental state. Let’s stipulate for now that Cogden could be convicted of criminal homicide if it were proved that she performed a voluntary act that recklessly risked her daughter’s life.

07:41 - Cogden didn’t go driving knowing she was subject to fits; but she did know she was prone to assault her daughter while sleeping, and her doctor had recommended she get psychiatric help. Knowing all this, she went to sleep in the room next to her daughter anyway. Was that reckless of her? We will soon need to examine the meaning of recklessness and other culpability terms. Until then, sleep tight. .