New answers tagged criminal-law
7
Your lawyer will advise you whether to worry, but it is not a crime to not pay the rent. The action that the landlord can take is (a) evicting you and (b) suing you for the unpaid rent. Whether a written lease is necessary depends on which province / territory you are in, since that is the level at which landlord-tenant law is determined. As far as I know, ...
5
"Necessity" is a defense against criminal prosecution in many jurisdictions. However, what counts as "necessary" is situation dependent. The essence of an action being "necessary" is an action is necessary if there is no other means of preventing a crime. In your scenario, there are many non-criminal alternative means of ...
-1
You cannot rely on the prosecution's evidence only. There are such things as conflicting evidence and unreliable witnesses. Probabilities must be weighed, it may come down to "who has the best eye witnesses".
For example, the prosecution may have an eye witness claiming you are the bank robber. This witness has no particular faults. A law-abiding ...
4
washington
Under the laws of Washington State, USA, a dog can be considered a deadly weapon. See State v. Hoeldt, 139 Wash. App. 225 (2007). Hoeldt allegedly released a dog which attacked a police officer, and was convicted of second degree assault with a deadly weapon. He appealed, claiming that a dog was not a weapon for purposes of the assault statute. ...
-1
There is no special crime "assault with a deadly weapon" in Washington state, but "deadly weapon" figures into the definition of 1st and 2nd degree assault. Third degree assault refers (as a possibility) to "weapon", and the relevant potentially applicable clause is in terms of an act that
With criminal negligence, causes ...
1
As others pointed out, there is a gap between theory and practice.
In theory, the prosecution must prove their case and the judge and/or jury will act accordingly. The defense has to do nothing.
In practice, prosecutors are not supposed to bring a case if they don't think they can win (a waste of taxpayer's money, if nothing else). So if the prosecutor sees ...
1
So I wonder whether there are any criminal trial processes around the world which place the entire burden of collecting evidence on the prosecution
In the US, there is a burden on the prosecution to present the case against the defendant's guilt. The prosecution is required to provide all exculpatory evidence to the defense, and it is a massive ethics ...
1
This is typically the case: the prosecution must prove there is a case. If they can't then the defense might not even need to defend. See:
Submission of No Case to Answer
Where the prosecution case is weak, either because there is no evidence to prove the offence or, although there is some evidence, the evidence is insufficient to support a conviction, the ...
-5
The idea of "innocent until proven guilty" is a rebuttable presumption. That is, the legal system presumes that someone is innocent, but that presumption can be rebutted by demonstrating facts and evidence to suggest that the truth is otherwise. This is a presumption in favor of the defense.
There are, however, any number of presumptions in favor ...
2
If the pursuit is unlawful (which it almost always is except for police) and the pursued suffers harm in fleeing from the pursuer, then the pursuer is responsible both criminally and civilly.
Being pursued would put a person in fear of harm: that’s the criteria for assault so the act of pursuing someone without lawful cause is a crime. Self-defence ceases to ...
0
"Innocent until proven guilty" sets the stage in the united-states
I know of a case where the prosecution presented a few items of evidence. Each one was disallowed as hearsay.
When the prosecution rested, the defense counsel said, "Your honor, the defense rests". This is important - see below.
The judge told the jury to return a "...
3
In any legal system where the defendant is "presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt", the burden of proof rests entirely on the prosecution. The defense has no burden which would require them to provide evidence.
However, the defense has the right to provide evidence, and it is almost always in the defense's interest to do ...
2
As other answers noted, the defence doesn't have to provide evidence at all if they don't want to. It's up to the prosecution to prove guilt in most places, and the defence only needs to provide evidence in as far as they want to challenge the evidence provided by the prosecution.
As for what you actually seem to be getting at:
Having the prosecution take on ...
9
"burden of proof is nominally with the prosecution in most circumstances, but in practice it seems to be somewhat shared"
The issue is in your interpretation of the phrase "burden of proof". This term has a specific meaning. What it doesn't mean is that a particular party is the only one who can or should give evidence. Rather, it means ...
19
Yes
The common law legal systems all require proof beyond reasonable doubt of each of the elements of the crime. If the prosecution fails to provide enough evidence to meet that burden on any of the elements then the defendant is not guilty.
As a practical matter, this is dealt with in different ways depending on the status of the investigation/trial.
If ...
42
The common law adversarial system is just that: the prosecution must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
The defense is not obliged to call evidence at all. They are allowed to though: they will do it merely if they feel that the prosecution evidence needs rebuttal — in order to discredit the evidence or, at least, raise that "reasonable doubt"....
27
united-states
Messaging (and other online communication) are fixed media.
A face-to-face conversation, or a telephone call, does not exist at all - except in the mental recollections of the participants. And those are always very problematic as evidence, because people's recall is inaccurate.
Whereas communication in a fixed medium is durable: a newspaper, ...
11
Can messages in messaging application be used as evidence to accuse someone?
When you say "accuse" I assume you mean have enough evidence to support a prosecution, as anyone can accuse anyone of anything, so I will answer in that vein from the perspective of england-and-wales.
A major tool in the law enforcement armoury is cell site analysis which ...
2
Multi Level Marketing is perfectly legal in India (hence the CIN/DIN registrations) unless it falls foul of one or more of the following to create, for example, an unlawful pyramid scheme.
The Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act 1978 and/or;
Direct Selling Guidelines 2016 (especially Clause 8: Prohibition of Pyramid Scheme & Money ...
3
Does the High Court of Justice of England and Wales (Queen's Bench
Division) ever exercise original criminal jurisdiction in serious
cases (eg, a terrorism trial) in modern times? Has it ever exercised
such jurisdiction since its creation by the Judicature Acts?
No, with the exception of criminal contempt of court proceedings (which arguably don't ...
4
Yes - all evidence needs to undergo evaluation
If there is ground for a Retrial or New Trial on the lower court level, that starts everything in the trial from 0. The whole matter is looked at de novo, which means as if there had never been any trial before. 1
All evidence is put on the record (again), motions to suppress or exclude evidence are evaluated (...
5
Could someone better elaborate on the distinction, what is the burden
of proof for not having mens rea and what is the burden of proof for
good faith, and how do the differ?
To give a specific example I know statutory rape laws are strict
liability laws, The very same Wikipedia article on strict liability
even says "it is possible to face felony charges ...
5
Affirmative defenses generally have a subjective or objective factual test for the jury to consider. In this case, the test may be something along the lines of "Given the totality of the circumstances, did the defendant take objectively reasonable precautions to make sure the victim was not underage, or would the defendant in particular have any ...
5
Mail sent to my address for someone who doesn't live there and I don't do any work for free [closed]
There appears to be a contradiction to my lack of enslavement or indentured servitude with a concept that someone can put mail in my mailbox and then expect me to work for someone else if that mail isn't for me.
The law can, and does, impose duties on a person that that person never chose to accept. For example, paying taxes. The prohibition on slavery ...
2
Mail sent to my address for someone who doesn't live there and I don't do any work for free [closed]
More generally, if you are required by law to do something and the consequence of not doing it is a fine or imprisonment, and if you only want to do the things that you freely choose to do therefore do things forbidden by criminal law, it is by definition a crime (not all government prohibitions are crimes, you have to look at the actual law, but I assume ...
2
Is it illegal to parachute from a paraglider in the UK? ... This activity would take place outside of ... regulations...
YES
See Article 90(1) of the Air Navigation Order 2016:
Subject to paragraphs (9), (10) and (11), a person must not drop, be dropped or be permitted to drop to the surface or jump from an aircraft flying over the United Kingdom except ...
16
Short answer:
It depends. It is lawful if one has a lawful reason, such as it's needed for work, or it's a folding pocketknife (e.g. a Swiss Army Knife) with a blade less than 3 inches.
Long answer:
The primary legislation is s.139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 which makes it unlawful to have in a public place:
(2) ... any article which has a blade or is ...
2
Yes.
At least one of the cases against Huawei includes charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statutes. To convict under RICO, the government needs to show a continuing pattern of behavior over at least ten years. Admissions of fact could undoubtedly be a part of demonstrating such a pattern.
A key paragraph of the ...
3
Yes, but...
Whilst this may well fulfill the requirement of violence (see @RockApe's answer), a further question is "was this lawful?"
Simply responding to a verbal insult by escalating to grabbing clothing is not normally justifiable. However if person B sees this (whether correctly or not) as being the preliminary step to being assaulted by ...
5
Police reports are treated as "Business Records" and are therefore not excluded by the hearsay rule, regardless of the availability of the declarant.
Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 803: Exceptions to the Rule Against Hearsay
Business Records Exception
The following are not excluded by the hearsay rule, even though the declarant is available as a ...
20
Has Person B committed assault even though person A may have verbally offended person B?
Yes
An assault is any act (and not mere omission to act) by which a person intentionally or recklessly causes another to suffer or apprehend immediate unlawful violence.
The term assault is often used to include a battery, which is committed by the intentional or ...
12
First of all, the jurisdiction would be England and Wales. The UK Government has a helpful page on the topic of assault in criminal law, but we are looking for the most basic idea of assault, and I find the sentencing council differentiates it better, and I will quote them from here on, unless otherwise noted.
Common assault (section 39, Criminal Justice Act ...
2
Do criminals get the bounty for turning themselves in?
In england-and-wales, the independent charity Crimestoppers can give cash rewards for information leading to an arrest and charge.
The giver of this information is guaranteed total anonymity so it is possible for a (suspected) criminal to claim their own reward - but due to the anonymity it is impossible ...
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