When someone commits a crime, what are the limits on a state's authority to define them as worthy of blame, and thus liable to punishment? This book answers that question, building on two ideas familiar to criminal lawyers: actus reus and mens rea, usually translated as "guilty act" and "guilty mind." In Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds, Stephen P. Garvey proposes an understanding of actus reus and mens rea as limits on the authority of a state, and in particular the authority of a democratic state, to ascribe guilt to those accused of crime. Garvey argues that actus reus and mens rea are necessary conditions for legitimate state punishment. Drawing on the work of political philosophers, moral philosophers, and criminal law theorists, Garvey provides clear explanations of how these concepts apply to a wide variety of cases. The book charges readers to consider practical examples and ask: whatever you believe regarding the justice of the rules, did the state act within the scope of its legitimate authority when it enacted those rules into law? Based on extensive research, this book presents a new theory in which the concepts of actus reus and mens rea mark the limits of state power rather than simply describe the elements of a crime. Making the compelling distinction between legitimacy and justice, Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds provides an important perspective on the limits of state authority.

Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds proposes an understanding of actus reus and mens rea (the guilty act and guilty mind) as limits on the authority of a democratic state to ascribe guilt. Going beyond discussions of legal justice, Stephen Garvey argues for actus reus and mens rea as necessary conditions, among others, for the legitimacy of state punishment.

Explores the role of criminal intent in constituting felony in the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury.

New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder delivers an exhilarating and timely thriller exploring how even the most powerful among us can be brought down by a carefully crafted lie and how the secrets we keep can never truly stay buried. The chief justice of the Supreme Court is about to be defamed, his career destroyed, by a powerful gossip website that specializes in dirt on celebs and politicians. Their top reporter has written an exposé claiming that he had liaisons with an escort, a young woman prepared to tell the world her salacious tale. But the chief justice is not without allies and his greatest supporter is determined to stop the story in its tracks. Nick Heller is a private spy—an intelligence operative based in Boston, hired by lawyers, politicians, and even foreign governments. A high-powered investigator with a penchant for doing things his own way, he’s called to Washington, DC, to help out in this delicate, potentially explosive situation. Nick has just forty-eight hours to disprove the story about the chief justice. But when the call girl is found murdered, the case takes a dangerous turn, and Nick resolves to find the mastermind behind the conspiracy before anyone else falls victim to the maelstrom of political scandal and ruined reputations predicated upon one long-buried secret.

A psychiatrist and an internationally recognized expert on violence, Dorothy Otnow Lewis has spent the last quarter century studying the minds of killers. Among the notorious murderers she has examined are Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, and Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon. Now she shares her groundbreaking discoveries--and the chilling encounters that led to them. From a juvenile court in Connecticut to the psychiatric wards of New York City's Bellevue Hospital, from maximum security prisons to the corridors of death row, Lewis and her colleague, the eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus, search to understand the origins of violence. GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY is an utterly absorbing odyssey that will forever change the way you think about crime, punishment, and the law itself.

A cold-blooded kidnapper has been playing a twisted game with a terrified Minnesota town. Now a respected member of the community stands accused of a horrific act of evil. But when a second boy disappears, a frightened public demands to know: Have the police caught the wrong man? Is the nightmare continuing—or just beginning? Prosecutor Ellen North believes she’s building a case against a guilty man—and that he has an accomplice in the shadows. As she prepares for the trial of her career, Ellen suddenly finds herself swept into a cruel contest of twisted wits, a dark dance of life and death . . . with an evil mind as guilty as sin. Praise for Tami Hoag and Guilty as Sin “Without a doubt . . . one of the most intense suspense writers around.”—Chicago Tribune “A chilling study of evil that holds the reader until the shocking surprise ending.”—New York Times bestselling author Phillip Margolin “The tangled relationships that lie just beneath the surface of Deer Lake are tantalizingly revealed.”—The New York Times Book Review “Accomplished and scary.”—Cosmopolitan

Sixteen-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddard agreed to house sit for relatives on the weekend of September 22, 2006. It was something the teenager had done before…but this time something went terribly wrong. When the family returned home at the end of the weekend they found Cassie lying on their living room floor brutally stabbed to death. Detectives focused on two of Cassie’s classmates who had briefly visited her on the night that she was murdered: Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper. Initially both boys denied any knowledge of the crime, but after two separate interrogations, Brian Draper told detectives a chilling story of murder straight out of a horror movie. The two boys were immediately arrested, and a shocking videotape was discovered that seemed to depict the two teens not only planning the cold-blooded murder, but celebrating it. Community outrage was strong and immediate. The public demanded justice. But was the video actually what it appeared to be: a cold-blooded documentary that detailed the plotting of Cassie’s murder; or something else entirely? Could anyone uncover the truth in time and convince a jury that sometimes things aren't always what they appear to be? The Guilty Innocent is narrated by Shannon Adamcik, mother of Torey, one of the accused boys. It takes readers behind the scenes of a trial where prosecutors cared more about public opinion than truth, defense attorneys, who had never argued a murder case, were in over their heads, and a young boy’s life hung in the balance. The United States is the only country in the world that will charge a juvenile as an adult and sentence them to life without parole. As the mother of one such child, I know exactly what happens when a juvenile is placed in adult court where they cannot defend themselves. They are immediately cut off from all human contact, locked in isolation, and railroaded through a justice system they simply cannot comprehend. Consequently, many of these juveniles are sentenced too much longer and harsher terms than their adult counterparts. I've personally lived through this, and I was compelled to write about it. I began for the simple reason that I had lived through this horrendous ordeal and I ached for someone to confide in. But reliving the most painful part of my life was extraordinarily difficult. Ultimately the only reason that I was able to persevere was my deep belief that the story was important and needed to be told. That is still true. This is a true story and no one can tell it better than the people who lived it. A crime reporter can look at the details of a case, but they cannot tell you how it feels to live through it. I can and I did. I used the pre-trial and trial transcripts, copies of the police reports, the autopsy and DNA reports, and DVD recordings of all of the evidence in the case. I've done copious research. But more importantly, I take readers step-by-step through what it feels like when your 16-year-old son is accused of first-degree murder; all the odds are stacked against him; and his defense is in the hands of attorneys you can’t fully trust to come through for you.

The author of Ill-Gotten Gains uses philosophy and psychology to examine how human behavior can be questioned under criminal law. Henri plans a trek through the desert. Alphonse, intending to kill Henri, puts poison into his canteen. Gaston also intends to kill Henri but has no idea what Alphonse has been up to. He puncture’s Henri’s canteen, and Henri dies of thirst. Who has caused Henri’s death? Was it Alphonse? Gaston? Or neither? Strange conundrums like this one have fascinated lawyers and no lawyers for centuries, raising problems of causation, intention, negligence, necessity, duress, complicity, and attempt. With wit and intelligence, Leo Katz seeks to understand the basic rules and concepts underlying these moral, linguistic, and psychological puzzles that plague the criminal law. Drawing on insights from analytical philosophy and psychology, he brings order into the seemingly endless multiplicity of these puzzles: many of them turn out to be variations of a few basic philosophical problems, making their appearance in different guises. To test his arguments, Katz moves far beyond the traditional body of exemplary criminal law cases. He brings into view the decisions of common law judges in colonial and postcolonial Africa, famous cases such as the Nuremberg trials, Aaron Burr’s treason, and ABSCAM, as well as well-known incidents in fiction. Praise for Bad Acts and Guilty Minds “Bad Acts and Guilty Minds . . . revives the mind, it challenges superficial analyses, it reminds us that underlying the vast body of statutory and case law, there is a rationale founded in basic notions of fairness and reason. . . . It will help lawyers to better serve their clients and the society that permits attorneys to hang out their shingles.” —Edward N. Costikyan, New York Times Book Review “With its novel combination of theoretical and interdisciplinary learning, its refreshingly new approach to old problems, and the easy accessibility made possible by the lightness of its style, Katz’s book should become a classic in the field for years to come. I would recommend it to beginning law students and lay persons interested in an introduction to the field, as well as to criminal law academics interested in furthering their already well-developed understanding of criminal law theory.” —Michael S. Moore, author of Law and Psychiatry: Rethinking the Relationship

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal offenders and calls into question our society’s commitment to mass incarceration. The Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. Kelly underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Appreciating the limits of moral blame critically undermines a commonplace rationale for long and brutal punishment practices. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.

Ultimately, Katz argues, the law, as well as our conscience, is surprisingly uninterested in final outcomes and astonishingly sensitive to how we get there, which is why sins of commission are so much more weighty than sins of omission.