State v. Mitchell

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State v. Mitchell, 170 Mo. 633, 71 S.W. 175 (1902), is a precedent-setting decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri which is part of the body of case law involving the prosecution of failed attempts to commit a crime. In United States law, cases involving failed criminal attempts can bring up interesting legal issues of whether the crime was unsuccessful due to factual impossibility or to legal impossibility. [1]

Contents

Background

Mistakes of fact have rarely been an adequate defense at common law. In the United States, 37 states have ruled out mistake of fact as a defense to charges of attempt. [2] Mistakes of law have proved a more successful defense.

Mistakes of fact

A "factual" impossibility occurs when, at the time of the attempt, the facts make the intended crime impossible to commit, even though the defendant is unaware of this when the attempt is made. [3] In People v. Lee Kong , 95 Cal. 666, 30 P. 800 (1892), a case from the Supreme Court of California, the defendant was found guilty of attempted murder for shooting at a hole in the roof, believing his victim to be there, and indeed, where his victim had been only moments before but was not at the time of the shooting. [3] Another case involving the defense of factual impossibility is the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania's decision in Commonwealth v. Johnson , 167 A. 344, 348 (Pa. 1933), in which a wife intended to put arsenic in her husband's coffee but by mistake added the customary sugar instead. Later, she felt repentant and confessed her acts to the police. She was arrested, tried, and convicted of attempted murder. [3] In United States v. Thomas , 13 U.S.C.M.A. 278 (1962), the United States Court of Military Appeals held that men who believed they were raping a drunken, unconscious woman were guilty of attempted rape, even though the woman was actually dead at the time the sexual intercourse took place. [1] [4]

Mistakes of law

An act that is considered legally impossible to commit is traditionally considered a valid defense for a person prosecuted for a criminal attempt. An attempt is considered to be a "legal" impossibility when the defendant has completed all of his intended acts, but those acts fail to fulfill all the required common law elements of a crime. Mistake of law has proved a successful defense. An example of a legally failed attempt is a person who shoots a tree stump; that person can not be prosecuted for attempted murder as there is no manifest intent to kill by shooting a stump. The underlying rationale is that attempting to do what is not a crime is not attempting to commit a crime. [5]

However, "legal" and "factual" mistakes are not mutually exclusive. A borderline case is that of a person who shot a stuffed deer, thinking it was alive. That person was originally convicted for attempting to kill a protected animal out of season, but in a debatable reversal, an appellate judge threw out the conviction on the basis that it is no crime to shoot a stuffed deer out of season. [1] [3]

Facts of the case

In Mitchell, the defendant fired shots into a room at night where his intended victim usually slept, intending to murder the victim. One bullet struck the victim's usual pillow. But the defendant did not know that the victim was sleeping elsewhere that particular night. Using these circumstances (that the bed was empty), the defendant pleaded not guilty on the grounds that the intended crime was factually impossible to commit, as there was no victim in the room into which he fired. [1]

At trial, the defendant was found guilty of attempted murder. The fact that the intended crime was impossible for the defendant to commit was not considered a defense for the charge of attempting to commit a felony, in this case murder. [6]

The defendant then appealed his judgment of conviction and sentence.

Decision

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed Mitchell's conviction and sentence, holding that the objective itself was criminal in nature and only a circumstance unknown to the defendant prevented its completion. The court held that a person who shoots into the bed of another person on purpose, believing that person to be in the bed, is guilty of attempted murder. [7] The court ruled that "when the consequences sought by a defendant are forbidden by law as criminal, it is not defense that the defendant could not succeed in reaching his goal because of circumstances unknown to him." [1]

Significance

This case is part of a body of law developed in the United States on the issue of how to handle attempt cases. In most United States jurisdictions, the defense that the act was a factual impossibility is not a valid defense. A case similar to this one is State v. Moretti 52 N.M. 182, 244 A.2d 499 (1968), in which the defendant agreed to perform a (then illegal) abortion upon a female undercover officer. Although the female police officer was not pregnant, the Supreme Court of New Mexico upheld the conviction:

...when the consequences sought by a defendant are forbidden by the law as criminal, it is no defense that the defendant could not succeed in reaching his goal because of circumstances unknown to him. [1]

With few exceptions, all cases in which an attempt to commit a felony was impossible to carry out because the defendant was mistaken in fact have been categorized as factually impossible and the conviction was upheld on appeal. [2]

Related Research Articles

An Alford plea, in United States law, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence. In entering an Alford plea, the defendant admits that the evidence presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. A variation in civil law countries is the peremptory plea, which may take the specific forms of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict. These doctrines appear to have originated in ancient Roman law, in the broader principle non bis in idem.

A plea bargain is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or nolo contendere. This may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to a less serious charge, or to one of the several charges, in return for the dismissal of other charges; or it may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to the original criminal charge in return for a more lenient sentence.

Burden of proof is a legal duty that encompasses two connected but separate ideas that apply for establishing the truth of facts in a trial before tribunals in the United States: the "burden of production" and the "burden of persuasion." In a legal dispute, one party is initially presumed to be correct, while the other side bears the burden of producing evidence persuasive enough to establish the truth of facts needed to satisfy all the required legal elements of legal dispute. There are varying types of burden of persuasion commonly referred to as standards of proof, and depending on the type of case, the standard of proof will be higher or lower. Burdens of persuasion and production may be of different standards for each party, in different phases of litigation. The burden of production is a minimal burden to produce at least enough evidence for the trier of fact to consider a disputed claim. After litigants have met the burden of production, they have the burden of persuasion: that enough evidence has been presented to persuade the trier of fact that their side is correct. There are different standards of persuasiveness ranging from a preponderance of the evidence, where there is just enough evidence to tip the balance, to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, as in United States criminal courts.

Attempted murder is a crime of attempt in various jurisdictions.

A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome is made in a criminal or civil proceeding, which may include a deportation proceeding under the United States Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). For example, it happens when a national of the United States (American) is forcefully deported as an alien, or a person is convicted of a misconduct or a crime that he/she did not commit. There is no statute of limitations for purposes of investigating and correcting a miscarriage of justice.

An attempt to commit a crime occurs if a criminal has an intent to commit a crime and takes a substantial step toward completing the crime, but for reasons not intended by the criminal, the final resulting crime does not occur. Attempt to commit a particular crime is a crime, usually considered to be of the same or lesser gravity as the particular crime attempted. Attempt is a type of inchoate crime, a crime that is not fully developed. The crime of attempt has two elements, intent and some conduct toward completion of the crime.

North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed that there are no constitutional barriers in place to prevent a judge from accepting a guilty plea from a defendant who wants to plead guilty while still protesting his innocence under duress as a detainee status. This type of plea has become known as an Alford plea, differing slightly from the nolo contendere plea in which the defendant agrees to being sentenced for the crime, but does not admit guilt. Alford died in prison in 1975.

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The doctrine of common purpose, common design, joint enterprise, joint criminal enterprise or parasitic accessory liability is a common law legal doctrine that imputes criminal liability to the participants in a criminal enterprise for all that results from that enterprise. The common purpose doctrine was established in English law, and later adopted in other common-law jurisdictions including Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, the Solomon Islands, Texas, Massachusetts, the International Criminal Court, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Legal impossibility is a traditional common law defense to a charge of an attempted crime. Legal impossibility arises when the act, if completed, would not be a crime. A person believes she is committing a crime, but the act is, in fact, lawful. For example, a person may believe she is receiving stolen goods, but the goods are in fact not stolen.

People v. Lee Kong, 95 Cal. 666 (1892), is a case in which the defendant claimed the "impossibility" defense to charges of assault, on the basis of a mistake in fact. The ultimate issue in this case is whether the defendant's actions and intent warrant criminal sanctions even though he failed to achieve a criminal act because the act itself was factually impossible to commit.

An impossibility defense is a criminal defense occasionally used when a defendant is accused of a criminal attempt that failed only because the crime was factually or legally impossible to commit. Factual impossibility is rarely an adequate defense at common law. This is not to be confused with a 'mistake of fact' defence, which may be a defence to a specific intent crime like larceny.

In the field of criminal law, there are a variety of conditions that will tend to negate elements of a crime, known as defenses. The label may be apt in jurisdictions where the accused may be assigned some burden before a tribunal. However, in many jurisdictions, the entire burden to prove a crime is on the prosecution, which also must prove the absence of these defenses, where implicated. In other words, in many jurisdictions the absence of these so-called defenses is treated as an element of the crime. So-called defenses may provide partial or total refuge from punishment.

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In English criminal law, an inchoate offence is an offence relating to a criminal act which has not, or not yet, been committed. The main inchoate offences are attempting to commit; encouraging or assisting crime; and conspiring to commit. Attempts, governed by the Criminal Attempts Act 1981, are defined as situations where an individual who intends to commit an offence does an act which is "more than merely preparatory" in the offence's commission. Traditionally this definition has caused problems, with no firm rule on what constitutes a "more than merely preparatory" act, but broad judicial statements give some guidance. Incitement, on the other hand, is an offence under the common law, and covers situations where an individual encourages another person to engage in activities which will result in a criminal act taking place, and intends for this act to occur. As a criminal activity, incitement had a particularly broad remit, covering "a suggestion, proposal, request, exhortation, gesture, argument, persuasion, inducement, goading or the arousal of cupidity". Incitement was abolished by the Serious Crime Act 2007, but continues in other offences and as the basis of the new offence of "encouraging or assisting" the commission of a crime.

<i>R v Gnango</i> British legal case

Regina v Armel Gnango[2011] UKSC 59 is the leading English criminal law case on the interaction of joint enterprise, transferred malice, and exemption from criminal liability where a party to what would normally be a crime is the victim of it. The Supreme Court held, restoring Gnango's conviction for the murder of Magda Pniewska, that he was guilty of murder notwithstanding the fact that he had not fired the shot which killed Pniewska during the shoot out which led to her death, and that the fatal shot had been fired by his opponent in an attempt to kill him. The judgment of the Supreme Court has been criticised over the alleged extent to which it was designed to mollify public opinion, and in the context of debates over the nature of the doctrine of joint enterprise.

<i>R v Jogee</i>

R v Jogee[2016] UKSC 8 was a 2016 judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom that reversed previous case law on joint enterprise. The Supreme Court delivered its ruling jointly with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which was considering an appeal from Jamaica, Ruddock v The Queen [2016] UKPC 7.

Kahler v. Kansas, 589 U.S. ___ (2020), is a case of the United States Supreme Court in which the justices ruled that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution do not require that states adopt the insanity defense in criminal cases that are based on the defendant's ability to recognize right from wrong. It was argued on October 7, 2019 and decided on March 23, 2020.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Richard M. Bonnie, Anne M. Coughlin, John C. Jefferies, Jr. & Peter W. Low (1997). Criminal Law. Westbury, NY: The Foundation Press. p. 251. ISBN   1-56662-448-7.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. 1 2 John Hasnas (2002). "Once More unto the Breach:The Inherent Liberalism of the Criminal Law and Liability for Attempting the Impossible" (PDF). George Mason University School of Law - Hastings Law Journal. p. 13. Retrieved 2008-01-10.
  3. 1 2 3 4 George P. Fletcher (2000). Rethinking Criminal Law. Oxford University Press. pp. 149–151. ISBN   978-0-19-513695-1 . Retrieved 2008-01-09.
  4. ↑ "Criminal Law & Criminal Procedure Case Briefs - United States v. Thomas - Court of Military Appeals, 1962" . Retrieved 2008-01-10.
  5. ↑ "Attempt -Impossiblity Unavailable as a Defense". Oklahoma Jury Instructions. Retrieved 2008-01-10.
  6. ↑ Charles W. Thomas & Donna M. Bishop (1988). Criminal Law: Understanding Basic Principles. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. ISBN   0-8039-2669-3.
  7. ↑ David Brody (2001). Criminal Law. Jones and Barrett. ISBN   9780834210837 . Retrieved 2008-01-09.
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