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A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law to describe an offense that resulted in the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods, to which additional punishments including capital punishment could be added; other crimes were called misdemeanors. Following conviction of a felony in a court of law, a person may be described as a felon or a convicted felon.
Theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word theft is also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as larceny, robbery, embezzlement, extortion, blackmail, or receiving stolen property. In some jurisdictions, theft is considered to be synonymous with larceny’’, while in others, theft is defined more narrowly. Someone who carries out an act of theft may be described as a thief.
Larceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking or theft of the personal property of another person or business. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law, where in many cases it remains in force.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to criminal justice:
Burglary, also called breaking and entering and sometimes housebreaking, is illegally entering a building or other areas to commit a crime. Usually that offence is theft, robbery or murder, but most jurisdictions include others within the ambit of burglary. To commit burglary is to burgle, a term back-formed from the word burglar, or to burglarize.
Embezzlement is the act of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion of such assets, by one or more persons to whom the assets were entrusted, either to be held or to be used for specific purposes. Embezzlement is a type of financial fraud. For example, a lawyer might embezzle funds from the trust accounts of their clients; a financial advisor might embezzle the funds of investors; and a husband or a wife might embezzle funds from a bank account jointly held with the spouse.
In criminal law, the intoxication defense is a defense by which a defendant may claim diminished responsibility on the basis of substance intoxication. Where a crime requires a certain mental state to break the law, those under the influence of an intoxicating substance may be considered to have reduced liability for their actions. With regard to punishment, intoxication may be a mitigating factor that decreases a prison or jail sentence. Numerous factors affect the applicability of the defense.
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and may be revealed to family members or associates rather than to the general public. It may involve using threats of physical, mental or emotional harm, or of criminal prosecution, against the victim or someone close to the victim. It is normally carried out for personal gain, most commonly of position, money, or property. It is also used, sometimes by state agencies, to exert influence; this was a common Soviet practice, so much so that the term "kompromat", transliterated from Russian, is often used for compromising material used to exert control.
Criminal conversion is a crime, limited to parts of common law systems outside England and Wales, of exerting unauthorized use or control of someone else's property, at a minimum personal property, but in some jurisdictions also applying to types of real property, such as land or to patents, design rights and trademarks. It differs from theft in that it does not include the element of intending to deprive the owner of permanent possession of that property. As such, it is a lesser offense than the crime of theft. Criminal conversion specifies a type of conversion in that it involves criminal law, not civil law.
Mutilation or maiming is cutting off or causing injury to a body part of a person so that the part of the body is permanently damaged, detached or disfigured.
In criminal law, property is obtained by false pretenses when the acquisition results from intentional misrepresenting of a past or existing fact.
Battery is a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact, distinct from assault which is the act of creating apprehension of such contact.
Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object, site or person. This can take the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things. When the sacrilegious offence is verbal, it is called blasphemy, and when physical, it is often called desecration. In a less proper sense, any transgression against what is seen as the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege, and so is coming near a sacred site without permission.
The Penal Code of California forms the basis for the application of most criminal law, criminal procedure, penal institutions, and the execution of sentences, among other things, in the American state of California. It was originally enacted in 1872 as one of the original four California Codes, and has been substantially amended and revised since then. The entirety of the Penal Code is available for free at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codesTOCSelected.xhtml?tocCode=PEN
Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), is a Supreme Court of the United States decision concerning double jeopardy. Benton ruled that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment applies to the states. In doing so, Benton expressly overruled Palko v. Connecticut.
The Criminal law of Australia is the body of law in Australia that relates to crime.
Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that filled in an important gap in the federal criminal law of sentencing. The federal criminal code does not contain a definition of many crimes, including burglary, the crime at issue in this case. Yet sentencing enhancements applicable to federal crimes allow for the enhancement of a defendant's sentence if he has been convicted of prior felonies. The Court addressed in this case how "burglary" should be defined for purposes of such sentencing enhancements when the federal criminal code contained no definition of "burglary." The approach the Court adopted in this case has guided the lower federal courts in interpreting other provisions of the criminal code that also refer to generic crimes not otherwise defined in federal law.
Crime is present in various forms in China.
In criminal law, a lesser included offense is a crime for which all of the elements necessary to impose liability are also elements found in a more serious crime. It is also used in non-criminal violations of law, such as certain classes of traffic offenses.
R v. Faulkner (1877) is a key reported appeal the Court for Crown Cases Reserved: holding that the mens rea for committing one criminal act does not necessarily transfer to all possible, potentially in other ways criminal, consequences of that act.
References
- ↑ Bonnie, R.J. et al. Criminal Law, Second Edition. Foundation Press, New York, NY: 2004, p. 271
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