Читать книгу Criminology For Dummies - Steven Briggs - Страница 43

A memorable example of how criminal and civil laws work in the real world is the O. J. Simpson murder case. O.J. Simpson was a Heisman Trophy winner and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who was arrested in 1994 for killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. In 1995, a jury in his criminal murder trial found him not guilty. But the matter wasn’t finished. The families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson filed a civil suit against Simpson for causing the deaths. As a result of that civil suit, another jury found Simpson liable (not guilty because a jury can only find guilt in a criminal case) for causing the deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. Because the verdict came from a civil suit, Simpson couldn’t be put in prison. Rather, the jury ordered him to pay over $30 million to the family of Ron Goldman and to Nicole Brown Simpson’s two children.

In the civil trial (unlike in the criminal trial), Ron Goldman’s family (the plaintiffs) forced Simpson to testify, and they didn’t have to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Simpson committed the murders. Rather, the plaintiffs had to prove only that “more likely than not” (in other words, that there was at least a 51 percent chance) Simpson committed the murders.

Criminal laws are categorized according to the punishments they impose. Generally, a criminal law may be either a felony or a misdemeanor. The difference between the two is as follows:

 A misdemeanor is a minor offense, and its maximum sentence usually can’t exceed one year. However, if someone is convicted of three misdemeanors, he can conceivably serve up to three years in jail. Petty larceny, such as shoplifting some cigarettes from a local convenience store, is usually a misdemeanor, and the punishment may be very light.

 A felony is the more serious offense, and someone who commits a felony can be punished with more than a year in jail or prison. Theft of an expensive item, such as a Macbook Pro laptop computer, can rise to the level of a felony and be subject to serious punishment.

You can look at your state’s criminal statutes to find out exactly which crimes your state considers misdemeanors and which ones it considers felonies. After all, an act that’s a misdemeanor in New York may be a felony in Alaska and vice versa.

I describe the main elements or requirements of a criminal law in the following sections. If an act doesn’t include these elements (and doesn’t include the possibility of jail time as punishment), it probably isn’t considered a crime. (But there are always exceptions, which is why people have to hire lawyers.)