Justification Defenses

Justification defenses Criminal defenses fall into two different categories justification defense and excuse defense. Justification defense includes when a defendant admits they have committed a crime but their actions were justified by duress, necessity, self-defense, and entrapment. Excuse defense includes when a defendant admits to committing a crime but believes they aren’t responsible due to a mentally impaired mind. In society today, excuse defenses are Age, Mental Disorder, Automatism, Mistake of Fact and Mistake of Law. To start, duress is an unlawful pressure of an individual participating or forced to do something against their own will. Within duress there are a group of elements that need to be meant. These which include the defendant's actions are the be judged in accordance with a reasonable person standard; there must be a threat of death or serious bodily harm from another individual that causes an individual to commit a crime; it does not excuse the intentional taking of the life of another; the threat must be immediate and imminent; an individual must have exhausted all reasonable and available alternatives to violating the law; and the defendant must not create or assist in creating the circumstances leading to the claim of duress (Lippman, pg.119). All of these elements are examples of duress and how an individual would be considered under this defense category if they were to force another person to participate in something they didn’t want to. Self- defense involves standing up protecting yourself and your property from anyone who has intentions of destroying or causing damage. This justifies the use of force against a person because you have to protect yourself from anyone who tries to put you in any harm’s way. One main factor when it comes down to self-defense and protecting yourself is that individuals take it to the next level and always want to use deadly force as a mean of self-defense when there are multiple other ways to going about defending yourself from any dangerous situation. That’s why according to section 26 of the Criminal Code, it states that “you can be charged with a criminal offense if you’re found using unnecessary excessive force than needed (Lippman pg.124). An example of this is two people getting into a fight and then one of the individuals take out a gun and shoots. The individual who fires the shot would be charged with an offense simply because they used a deadly weapon to stop a fight between their self and a person instead of dealing with the situation in another matter. Also, when dealing with self-defense there are a few elements that need to be proven. It begins with having a Reasonable belief that someone is armed to attack you; Imminence that a threat is really about to occur; and Retreat not being able to safely retreat after using deadly force (Lippman, pg.125). Entrapment is a defense of the government of bribing a defendant into committing a crime or convincing them to admit they committed a crime. This defense is made up of two test that illustrate the character of the individual on deciding if they were entrapped by the government or if they actually committed the crime. The Subjective test focuses on the defendant and ask whether the accused possessed the criminal intent or whether the government created the offense. The objective test focuses on the conduct of the government rather than on the character of the defendant. Both of these test are designed to figure out if the government is putting individuals in a trap they don’t need to be in. Many factors are considered when these test are administered and they include the defendant's past criminal arrest and charges, whether the defendant was opposed to commit this defense, if the defendant has any other accused criminal activity on profile and if their character fits well with the crime committed. In other words, Mistake of law is explained as “ignorance of the law is no excuse” (Lippman, pg.123). This means mistaking the law for acting in any type of behavior doesn’t mean you will be opted out and not charged criminally for a crime you have committed. An example of this would be an individual who transports cocaine from one country to the next thinking that it’s legal in the United States but it’s not. Their actions would be mistaken as them thinking the law is one way when they already know it isn’t. Also, mistake of law can be explained as a defendant not realizing they have committed a crime because they have no clue or no knowledge of the law that they would be charged with. Lastly, criminal actions that are occurring is believed to be dealt with age where a child should be responsible for the crimes they have committed but it’s up to the law who decides if they are to be held as an adult or continue to be held as a juvenile. This law is categorized as infancy and divided into two different groups which include, where a child younger than seven years of age lack the criminal intent; children older than seven and younger than fourteen are presumed to be without capacity to form a criminal intent; and children fourteen and older possessed the same criminal capacity as adults. This law has been modified throughout the years over time because in society today children are committing crimes that they need to be punished for and not let off easy. For example, a child who kills their parent and then sets the house on fire. Even though this child may have been through some tough times throughout their life doesn’t mean they have to act in this manner. Depending on the judge who is at their hearing and the evidence given about this case would depend if this child should be charged as a juvenile or an adult (Lippman, pg. 116). In conclusion, crime is committed every second and every minute of the day, and many of these crimes are excused due to factors of age, mistake of fact, mistake of law and mental disorders. These factors prevent an individual from being fully responsible for their crime because without no criminal intent no crime can be review. Also, some of these crimes can be justified by factors such as duress, self-defense and entrapment. Individuals who commit a crime, but think their crime is justified fall into these categories. However, when dealing with these defenses they both require that elements are to be proven in order to charge an individual or hold an individual criminally responsible for the actions they committed.