14.1 Elements, Sources & Classifications of Crimes

The Paralegal CORE Competency Exam (PCCE) tests criminal law as a labeling skill. Domain 2 does not ask you to try a homicide. It asks whether the facts describe a voluntary act plus a culpable mental state, whether the offense is specific intent or strict liability, whether the client is a principal, an accomplice, or an accessory after the fact, and whether the prohibition comes from a penal-code section or a constitutional limit. Match the nouns — actus reus, mens rea, larceny, embezzlement, felony — and the item is usually finished.

This is federal-and-general teaching. State penal codes vary on degree labels, dollar cutoffs, and whether theft has been consolidated. The exam still expects one national picture of elements, sources, and classifications.

Elements: actus reus, mens rea, concurrence, and result-crime extras

Every completed crime needs a guilty act and, except for strict-liability offenses, a guilty mind. Actus reus is a voluntary act or a legally recognized omission. An omission is criminal only when the law recognizes a duty to act — statute, status relationship, contract, or creating the peril. Reflexes, convulsions, and movements during unconsciousness are not voluntary acts. Thoughts alone are not crimes.

Mens rea is the mental state the statute or common-law definition requires. Concurrence means that mental state must exist at the time of the act. Finding a wallet by accident and only later deciding to keep it is not larceny at the moment of pickup; the later appropriation is a separate act that can supply concurrence if the intent then attaches.

Result crimes (homicide is the prototype) add causation and a prohibited harm. Causation is actual (but-for) plus proximate (the result is a foreseeable enough product of the act, not a freak intervening cause the law treats as breaking the chain). Conduct crimes — possession, many driving-under-the-influence statutes — are complete when the act and mental state coincide. No separate corpse or dollar loss is required.

Exam tell. The stem names a death, a burned building, or a completed taking and asks what else the prosecutor must prove. For a result crime, do not stop at act plus intent.

Specific intent, general intent, and strict liability

Specific-intent crimes require a purpose beyond the physical act. Classic list: larceny (intent to permanently deprive), burglary (intent to commit a felony or other crime inside), attempt, conspiracy, solicitation, and a premeditated murder. General-intent crimes require only the intent to do the prohibited act — battery and many traditional rape / sexual-assault formulations. Strict-liability crimes require no mens rea. Clean examples are public-welfare regulatory offenses (selling adulterated food; some traffic and labeling crimes). Treatment of statutory rape varies by jurisdiction — do not treat every sex offense as strict liability on a silent stem.

Intent labels matter for the next section. Voluntary intoxication and some mistakes of fact can negate specific intent. They rarely wipe out general intent or strict liability.

Trap. Motive is why the person acted. It is not an element. Silent statutes are not automatically strict liability; courts often read in a default mens rea unless the offense is a classic public-welfare crime.

Parties: principal, accomplice, accessory

The principal commits the crime or is treated as the perpetrator under modern statutes. An accomplice (aider and abettor) assists or encourages before or during the crime with the intent that the crime be committed. Modern codes typically punish the accomplice as a principal. An accessory after the fact helps after the crime — harboring, concealing evidence, helping flee — and is usually charged with a separate, lesser offense, not the underlying felony.

Older opinions still say principal in the first degree, principal in the second degree, and accessory before the fact. For the PCCE, sort during (accomplice) from after (accessory after the fact).

Exam tell. The getaway driver who agreed in advance is an accomplice. The roommate who hides the gun the next morning is an accessory after the fact.

Inchoate crimes: attempt, conspiracy, solicitation

Inchoate crimes punish unfinished harm.

• Solicitation is asking, encouraging, or commanding another to commit a crime, with specific intent that the crime occur. It is complete when the request is made, even if the other person refuses.
• Attempt is specific intent to commit the target crime plus a substantial step (modern / Model Penal Code style) or, in older common-law language, coming dangerously close. Mere preparation is not attempt.
• Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime, plus — in many jurisdictions — an overt act in furtherance. The agreement is the actus reus.

Merger: attempt merges into the completed crime. Solicitation often merges into attempt or the completed offense. Conspiracy typically does not merge; the defendant can be guilty of both the conspiracy and the object crime. Pinkerton liability (a conspirator can be liable for reasonably foreseeable crimes committed by coconspirators in furtherance) is a federal-and-some-states idea. States vary. Do not assume every local code uses Pinkerton.

Sources of criminal law

Historically, judges defined common-law crimes (murder, manslaughter, larceny, burglary, arson, robbery, rape). Today almost all crimes are statutory. The jurisdiction's penal code (criminal code) is the working source a paralegal cites in a charging document, a motion to dismiss, or a jury-instruction request. The Model Penal Code is influential secondary drafting history. It is not self-executing law unless a state adopted a provision.

Constitutional limitations sit above the code:

• No ex post facto criminal law (U.S. Const. art. I). The legislature may not make an act criminal after it was done, increase the punishment after the fact, or change the rules of evidence to make conviction easier in a retroactive way.
• Due-process vagueness. A statute must give ordinary people fair notice of what is forbidden and must not invite arbitrary enforcement.
• No bills of attainder.
• Other limits (First Amendment; Eighth Amendment proportionality, conceptually) can invalidate or narrow a statute.

Exam tell. A new ordinance that criminalizes last month's conduct is an ex post facto problem, not a sources-are-only-common-law problem.

Classifications: persons, property, morality and public order, inchoate

Crimes against persons target the body or autonomy.

• Homicide is the killing of a human being. Murder is a homicide committed with malice aforethought: intent to kill, intent to cause grievous bodily harm, depraved-heart recklessness, or — in jurisdictions that retain it — felony murder. First-degree murder is typically a premeditated and deliberate killing or a listed felony-murder. Second-degree is other malice murder. Voluntary manslaughter is an intentional killing mitigated by heat of passion after adequate provocation. Involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing from criminal negligence or an unlawful act that is not felony murder. Degree names and felony-murder lists vary by state.
• Assault is either an attempted battery or placing the victim in reasonable apprehension of imminent battery. Battery is the unlawful application of force to another.
• Robbery is larceny from the person or presence by force or threat.
• Rape / sexual assault is a statutory cluster built on lack of consent and a sexual act. Modern codes have replaced many common-law details. States vary on grading.

Crimes against property target possession or title.

Many modern theft statutes consolidate larceny, embezzlement, and false pretenses. On a common-law stem, keep them separate.

Crimes against morality and public order are tested at a high level: drug possession and trafficking, disorderly conduct, and vice (prostitution; some gambling). Know the bucket. Do not invent unpublished quantity thresholds.

Inchoate crimes, already defined, are their own classification when the target offense was never completed.

Felony, misdemeanor, infraction

A felony is typically an offense punishable by more than one year in prison (or death). A misdemeanor is typically punishable by up to one year in jail, often plus a fine. An infraction (or violation) is usually a fine-only offense with no jail and generally no jury. The potential sentence in the statute, not the sentence the judge later imposes, usually grades the crime. States vary on labels (gross misdemeanor; wobbler). Federal practice uses the more-than-one-year felony line.

Term-swap. Robbery is a crime against persons because of the force. Burglary is about entry with intent, not a completed theft. Embezzlement starts with lawful possession. Accessory after the fact is after, not the getaway driver. Strict liability is no mens rea, not the jury can infer intent.