Chapter 3: Expanding the Concept of Crime (Quiz)

The governor of a state is disliked by many in the state's legislature. The legislature pronounce him guilty of a murder that he clearly did not commit, hoping that the resulting punishment will remove him from office. This scenario is illustrative of which type of constitutionally prohibited act?

Bill of attainder

Godfrey is frustrated with his criminal law professor, and so he crawls under his professor's car and makes a small cut in the car's brake lines in the hopes that his professor will die in a car crash. That evening, before any brake fluid has a chance to leak out, the professor is killed when a distracted truck driver crashes into the professor's car from behind. Godfrey is spotted crawling under the car on a surveillance video and is arrested. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

Godfrey could not be convicted of murder because no factual causation exists

Jimmy accidentally fires his gun. The bullet hits a building, rebounds, and then hits a person walking beside the building, who gets killed. Which of the following is the "cause in fact" of the pedestrian's death?

Jimmy's shooting

Leo and Martin burst into a bank and tell everyone to get on the floor and hand over their money. Leo and Martin couldn't get real guns, so they painted two squirt guns black. An off-duty police officer, mistaking the squirt guns for real guns, opens fire on the pair. Martin is killed, but Leo survives. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

Leo can be charged with felony murder for Martin's death

Mikael confesses to the police that he sexually assaulted his girlfriend. Which of the following is true according to the corpus delicti rule?

Mikael can be punished only if there is further evidence found that he committed the crime

Sigmund is angry that a patient regularly arrives late to his psychoanalysis appointments, and so he plans to get back at the patient. Sigmund cuts most of the way through one leg on his patient's chair. When his tardy patient finally arrives and sits in the chair, he falls over backward and hits his head on the bookcase behind him. The bookcase then falls forward onto the patient, killing him. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

Sigmund can be charged with his patient's killing because Sigmund's actions are the factual and proximate cause of his patient's death

Simon enters a convenience store brandishing a knife and demands that the clerk open the cash register and safe and hand over all his cash. While bending down to open the safe, the clerk hits his head on the counter, causing a fatal aneurysm. Simon runs out of the store empty-handed, but is caught after the police analyze the security footage. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

Simon can be charged with felony murder

Emile is arrested and charged with detonating a bomb at a church; thankfully, no one was injured in the blast. At the time of the offense, this crime carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. After the bombing, but before his trial, the state passed a new hate crime statute which would make Emile's maximum sentence 20 years in prison. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

The prohibition of ex post facto laws means that Emilie cannot recieve a sentence of more than 10 years

Theodore confesses to police that he killed his boyfriend. Theodore then brings police to the crime scene, where they discover the body of the deceased. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

Theodore's confession will be accepted because the corpus delicti of the crime has been established

Which of the following is true of ex post facto laws?

an ex post facto law is one that aggravates a crime, or makes it more serious than it was when committed

Zygmunt is being interviewed on television, where he tells the show's host that he regularly smokes marijuana. Which principle of law makes it impossible to convict him based solely upon this statement?

corpus delicti

__________ is a principle of law that holds that a criminal conviction cannot be based solely on the uncorroborated confession or admission of an accused.

corpus delicti

Which of the following is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution?

double jeopardy

Felony murder statutes differ from statutes of other forms of murder in that they hold a person liable for the murder __________.

even if the killing was unintentional

Agatha is sentenced to life imprisonment by a state court for felony murder. A few years later, a new law is passed in the state which increases the punishment for felony murder to a death sentence, but no changes are made to Agatha's sentence. Which of the following legal concepts explains why Agatha does not face the death penalty?

ex post facto

Which of the following restrictions on criminal law prohibits laws from being applied retroactively; that is, applied to acts committed before the law was enacted and effective?

ex post facto

Which of the following is true of the concept of corpus delicti?

federal courts have abandoned the requirement of establishing the corpus delicti of a crime

__________ statutes hold a person involved in the commission of a felony responsible for homicide if another person dies during the offense, even though the death may have been unintentional.

felony murder

Loretta is attacked by a thief while returning from work on a rainy day. She pushes the thief away and starts running. The thief shoots at Loretta, but the bullet misses her. Half a mile down the street, still running, Loretta is hit by a car, which kills her. Which of the following is true of the given scenario?

the thief cannot be convicted for the crime because the car that killed Loretta cannot be reasonably foreseen

When Samantha finds out that her husband has been cheating on her, she decides to kill him at the gas station where he is employed. Her aim is faulty, and she never even injures her husband. One of her shots ricochets into a gas tank, however, which explodes and kills a customer at the gas station. She argues that her bullet didn't directly cause the customer's death. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

Samantha can be convicted for murdering the bystander, even though she did not mean to hurt him

Which of the following is an axiom that holds that behavior cannot be criminal if no law exists that defines it as criminal?

The principle of legality

Sandra is sentenced by a state court to five years in prison for possession of illegal drugs. A year after her conviction, the state passes a law that increases the minimum prison term to eight years for those found in possession of illegal drugs. Which of the following is most likely true of the given scenario?

according to the constitutional provision against ex post facto laws, Sandra does not have to serve the additional term prescribed by the new law

In a statute which makes it a crime to "knowingly commit any lewd or lascivious act in the presence of any child under the age of 16 years," the age of the victim is known as __________.

an attendant circumstance

Which of the following best illustrates the concept of proximate cause?

an elderly victim dies of a heart attack when a thief produces a gun during a robbery

Benjamin, a drug addict, dies from an overdose of a drug that he takes with his friends Carter and Yan Li at Carter's house. Which of the following is most likely true if the case is tried under the felony murder rule?

both Carter and Yan Li can be convicted for Benjamin's death even if the killing was unintentional

__________ refers to the requirement that the concurrence of a guilty mind and a criminal act must produce harm.

causation

Dr. Hermann accuses Linda, a worker at his hospital, of stealing money from his office. The court hearing the case, however, dismisses the charges against Linda, stating that there is no direct or indirect evidence of the crime having taken place. In the given scenario, the charges against Linda have been dismissed due to the court's failure to establish __________.

corpus delicti

Which of the following can be confirmed using the "but-for" test?

factual casuality

Which of the following is true of factual causality?

proof of factual cause alone is not sufficient for a conviction to result

The American Law Institute uses the term "legal cause" rather than __________.

proximate cause

__________ is the primary or moving cause that plays a substantial part in an event that brings about injury or damage.

proximate cause

Proximate causality differs from factual causality in that proximate causality __________.

represents the primary cause of the harm that results from a person's action

Two burglars break into a house late in the night. Hearing the noise, the owner of the house wakes up and uses a shotgun to kill one of the burglars. The other burglar escapes. Which of the following is true of the given scenario?

the burglar who escaped can be convicted or murder under the felony murder rule

Causation refers to __________.

the connection between an actor's conduct and some resulting harm

Maximilian is arrested and charged under a statute which makes it illegal to "perform any manner of act which would be considered offensive." His strongest argument against a conviction would be what?

the statute violates the void for vagueness principle