Excuses And Ex-Offhletes In Joel Samaha's Criminal Justice

839 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: A short essay on the insanity plea

Before an individual is classified as an ex-offender, they are first classified as an offender; before this classification takes place, the individual is what the criminal justice system calls a defendant; before this particular person is trialed, they must first go through the ladder of the system. Perhaps they started simply as a suspect product of an arrest or an investigation (Samaha, 9). Like with everything in life, many individuals try to find excuses; in sports you always hear the boxer say he lost because he didn’t have a good training camp, or the baseball player saying that his wrist hurts and that is why he was not able to hit the ball. Barely we hear people say the actual truth on what really happened; take the examples of the boxer and the baseball player, it is extremely weird to hear them say “my opponent just outclassed me”, or “he is a very good pitcher, one which possesses a strong fast ball”. In some cases within the criminal justice system is the …show more content…

In his book Criminal Justice seventh edition, Joel Samaha expresses his beliefs on what it means to give an excuse for someone’s imperfections or imperfect acts; nothing but “excuses, excuses, excuses, criminal law doesn’t like them”(Samaha, 116).
With this idea of excuses now in our minds, let’s take a look at a case that has these same ideas behind it; Richard Kirk, a 49 year old man accused of murdering his wife has claim insanity as an excuse for his violent act (Paul). Kirk stated that when he took the actions that provoke his wife’s death (in this case shooting her), he did not possess the ability to carry out or even think about such acts (Paul). After reading the article on this particular case, I truly believe that Mr. Kirk is using the plea of insanity to simply be acquitted from his charges. Within the lines of the article, it is stated that Richard Kirk consumed an eatable candy that

Show More
Related

  • Carol Travis and Elliot Aronson's Book Review: Justifying our Actions

    1152 Words  | 3 Pages

    Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson have written a book that many people may find difficult to read. Why? Because it is like holding a mirror in front of one’s own face and looking into it. The book is about something most, if not all of us, have done: Justified our actions or words no matter how wrong they were. As Tavris and Aronson (2007) wrote in their book, “. . . most of us find it difficult, if not impossible to say, ‘I was wrong; I made a terrible mistake.’ The higher the stakes – emotional, financial, moral – the greater the difficulty.”

    Read More

  • Wrongful Conviction Has Plagued the Canadian Justice System

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    Roberts, J. V., & Grossman, M. G. (2012). Why Say Sorry When I Didn't Do It? Remorse and the Dilemma of the Wrongfully Convicted. Criminal Justice in Canada: A Reader Fourth Edition. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Nelson Education Ltd

    Read More

  • Cognitive Disorder, Automatism, Defenses And Excuse Defense

    1823 Words  | 4 Pages

    defenses and justification defenses. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Focusing on excuse defense, some examples are known as; age, mental disorder, automatism, mistake of fact, and mistake of law. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Mental disorder is defined as “disease of the mind.” (Lawteacher.net, 2014) This excuse supports that the defendant was not thinking normally at the time of the criminal act and therefor did not understand the act of the crime they committed. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Some examples of mental disorder are known as paranoia, schizophrenia, and depression. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Automatism is used as an excuse that the environment around the defendant caused them to commit the criminal act involuntarily. This excuse focuses on actus reus, and is hands down one of the hardest circumstances to prove in a trial. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Mistake of Fact is used in trial to downplay or eliminate mens rea in a criminal act that has been committed. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) The source of this excuse is that the defendant is unaware of the law that they have broken that will charge them formally. A very popular use of mistake of fact is used in deadly force because it is based off of pure judgment which may vary from one person to another.

    Read More

  • Insanity Defense Essay

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    In order for someone to be found guilty of a crime they must have actus reus and mens rea. The insanity defense did not deal with the actus rea, but the question is whether or not the defendant knew wrongfulness of his crime. The right of this defense come from the fact that a person should not be liable if he is not capable mentally to know what he is doing and able to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. Although the insanity defense tactic is rarely used and rarely successful, defense lawyers sometimes have strategy behind the weak insanity defense. The success in the insanity defense will not be to prove that the defendant was insane at the time of the crime, but to achieve other goals based on the defendant

    Read More

  • Ill or Evil: The Insanity Defense

    1556 Words  | 4 Pages

    Insanity is one of those words used today that gets thrown around a lot. Our society has become so numb to it because we were it on a regular basis. Albert Einstein describes insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Albert Einstein may have been a genius, but in this case he is wrong. There are people in this world who are mentally insane and they can’t help themselves. On rare occasions people like this become killers. In the legal system we have a defense an accused murderer can use to show they were not in their right mind when the act occurred. This is the insanity defense. This happens in 1% of criminal trials in the United States (US). A perfect example of a case that used the insanity defense was Andrea Yates v The State of Texas.

    Read More

  • The Insanity Defense

    1267 Words  | 3 Pages

    Much of my skepticism over the insanity defense is how this act of crime has been shifted from a medical condition to coming under legal governance. The word "insane" is now a legal term. A nuerological illness described by doctors and psychiatrists to a jury may explain a person's reason and behavior. It however seldom excuses it. The most widely known rule in...

    Read More

  • The Validity of the Insanity Plea

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    Insanity, by its dictionary definition, is the derangement of the mind. (Dictionary.com) It is used in everyday context, when people say “You are insane for not doing your homework” or “ That traffic getting out of the game was insane last night!”. However the real definition, written by Columbia University Press states that “The term insanity is used chiefly in criminal law, to denote mental aberrations of defects that may relieve a person from the legal consequences of his or her acts” (Columbia University, Press). This issue is very important because many people try to get out of their true consequences of their actions, and by using this plea, sometimes they get away with it. The Insanity Plea has been used again and again in the US courts, but it should be disproved because of the true legal definition, because many people try to fake insanity, and because of how the social concept of insanity is different than the actual mental illness.

    Read More

  • Abusing the Insanity Defense

    870 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the article” The Durham rule was eventually rejected by the federal courts, because it cast too broad a net. Alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, and drug addicts had successfully used the defense to defeat a wide variety of crimes,”(Insanity) this shows how people would abuse the insanity defense to get out of a crime. There was this case where John Hinckley schizophrenia, and was charged of assault because he beat a stranger in the bus for no reason. John was explaining he was hearing voices that he could not control. He knew what he did was wrong, but his impulse was uncontrollable, and because of his problem he was not guilty.

    Read More

  • The Insanity Defense

    1333 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... or by giving them written tests. Some psychiatrists call mental diseases a myth. The insanity defense would require both a mental disease and a relationship between the illness and the criminal behavior, neither of which could be scientifically proven. Of the criminals both acquitted and convicted using the insanity defense, a good number have shown conclusive evidence of recidivism. Many dangerous persons are allowed to return to the streets and many non-dangerous persons are forced into facilities due to an insanity plea adding further confusion and injustice within both the legal and medical systems. The insanity defense is impossible to maintain on the foundation of rules such as the M'Naghten Rule, and the relationship between law and psychiatry must be reinstated on a more scientific level, based on the neurological work now going on in the brain sciences.

    Read More

  • Racism In The Justice System Essay

    1377 Words  | 3 Pages

    The system has gone as deep as to making it so that even if a person has not committed a crime, but is being charged for it they can agree to a plea bargain, which makes it so even though the person did not do it the system is going to have them convicted of it anyway (Quigley 1). “As one young man told me ‘who wouldn’t rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk twenty-five years for a crime they didn’t do?” (Quigley 2). The criminal justice system has scared the majority of the population into believing that even though they did not commit a crime, they are convicted of it.

    Read More

  • Ethics In The Book Everyday Ethics For The Criminal Justice Professional

    1128 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ethics has numerous meaning to it. It is not something that one can place a single definition on. Not only is it near impossible to have a definition for this word. It is also hard for any two people have the same specific definition for this word. Ethics ultimately means someone’s moral and logical thought process on what is morally right and wrong. Though, many people might feel that ethics can have a specific definition, ultimately this term is a word that is going to be defined on an individual bases.

    Read More

  • Insanity Plea

    1099 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his proposal “Severe Personality-Disordered Defendants and the Insanity Plea in the United States,” George Palermo, a forensic psychiatrist, presents his thesis for the insanity plea to be reversed back to its previous definition. People who had personality disorders that could cause them to become psychotic for even a brief moment used to be eligible to receive the verdict not guilty by reason of insanity, before the United States restricted it to only people affected by mental illnesses. A mental illness is a disorder such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which can cause a person to be unable to determine whether an act is right or wrong. It d...

    Read More

  • Automatism, Insanity and Diminished Responsibility

    1568 Words  | 4 Pages

    Insanity, automatism and diminished responsibility all play a significant role in cases where the defendant’s mind is abnormal while committing a crime. The definition of abnormal will be reviewed in relationship to each defence. In order to identify how these three defences compare and contrast, it is first important to understand their definition and application. The appropriate defence will be used once the facts of the cases have been distinguished and they meet the legal tests. The legal test of insanity is set out in M’Naghten’s Case: “to establish a defence…of insanity it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” To be specific, the defect of reason arises when the defendant is incapable of exercising normal reasoning. The defect of reason requires instability in reasoning rather than a failure to exercise it at a time when exercise of reason is possible. In the case of R v Clarke, the defendant was clinically depressed and in a moment of absent-mindedness, stole items from a supermarket...

    Read More

  • Defence Of Insanity Essay

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first condition to be established is the defendant’s defect of reason. This must show that the defendant was impaired at reasoning. However, if the defendant was capable of reasoning but still committed a crime despite this then the defence of insanity will not be available as decided in the case of Clarke (1972)

    Read More

  • Comparing and Contrasting the Differences of Insanity, Automatism and Diminished Responsibility

    1543 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are two theories that justify punishment: retributivism according to which punishment ensures that justice is done, and utilitarianism which justifies punishment because it prevents further harm being done. The essence of defences is that those who do not freely choose to commit an offence should not be punished, especially in those cases where the defendant's actions are involuntary. All three of these defences concern mental abnormalities. Diminished responsibility is a partial statutory defence and a partial excuse. Insanity and automatism are excuses and defences of failure of proof. While automatism and diminished responsibility can only be raised by the defendant, insanity can be raised by the defence or the prosecution. It can be raised by the prosecution when the defendant pleads diminished responsibility or automatism. The defendant may also appeal against the insanity verdict. With insanity and diminished responsibility, the burden of proof is on the defendant. With automatism the burden of proof is on the prosecution and they must negate an automatism claim beyond reasonable doubt.

    Read More

More about Excuses And Ex-Offhletes In Joel Samaha's Criminal Justice

Open Document