Answer the five question about criminal law.
A complete answer is several sentences in length and contains (1) the correct legal rule(s), (2) an explanation of the legal rule(s), (3) application of the legal rule(s) to the facts in the question, and (4) a conclusion. Number your answer the way the questions are numbered.
1. Imagine you are a small business owner in an urban area that has repeatedly been targeted by neighborhood vandals who have defaced your building with spray painted graffiti that consists of hate speech toward your Middle Eastern heritage and Muslim faith. The local police have not prosecuted the vandals because the law in your community only prohibits graffiti on public buildings, and considers graffiti on privately owned buildings to be a civil matter. So you volunteer for a citizen s committee to help draft a new criminal law to make it a crime for anyone to deface any building with graffiti that costs money to remove.
a. State the punishment that is associated with a felony and the punishment associated with a misdemeanor. Then identify and explain whether your proposal will make this crime a felony or a misdemeanor.
b. Define mens rea, actus reus, and strict liability. All crimes require either both mens rea and actus reus or are strict liability crimes. Explain whether this crime requires mens rea and actus reus or if it is a strict liability crime.
See:
Local Laws and Graffiti Prevention and Graffiti Resource Council
2. For the following stories, identify whether the business was charged with a crime or whether civil law was utilized to address illegal acts:
a. Walmart pleads guilty to dumping hazardous waste
b. Investment Advisor accused of defrauding nuns
3. For the following scenarios, identify and define the crime involved, and identify who could be charged with that crime (the individual(s) or the company or both):
a. A local health inspector, John, finds a few minor health code violations in your restaurant but threatens to actually shut you down (an action too severe under the circumstances) unless you give him your Ohio State Buckeye football season tickets to the OSU v. Michigan game.
b. A young entrepreneur, Rick, sets up an online business called, The BEST FANS IN THE LAND, and offers tickets to all Ohio State football home games, at a premium price of $300 a seat, but in fact he has no tickets to sell and plans to just take the money and then shut down the website.
c. A new local florist, Laura, is opening her own shop, Fresh Flowers For Friends (4F, Inc.) and has already ordered thousands of dollars of fresh cut flowers for a huge grand opening event, but is informed by the local building inspector, Joe, that he is refusing to give her an occupancy permit because the renovations to her newly leased space do not meet building code. Laura offers Joe $2,500 if he will give her the permit so she can open on time.
4. For the following scenarios, state and define the federal law that would assist in fighting that type of White Collar crime, and explain the punishment or remedy available under each law.
a. The CEO of a corporation acquiesces with the CFO s decision to use the nonaudited services of an independent accountant to prepare their annual report for their annual stockholders meeting so that they can leave off the annual report a loss of one million dollars resulting from the settlement of a sexual harassment lawsuit because the scandal would scare off needed investors.
b. A pharmacy tech working for an independent pharmacist, who has contracts to supply drugs to several area nursing homes, notices that the pharmacist is continuing to fill prescriptions of deceased patients and accepting payment from Medicare for these prescriptions and profiting at least seven thousand dollars each month.
c. A group of four laid off employees got together and schemed up a plan to get back at the company that ruined their lives when they lost their jobs, and even named their team the REVENGE WARRIORS. They purchased expensive electronics from their former employer s retail stores using counterfeited credit cards and by opening bogus lines-of-credit from the store using fake driver s licenses. The team, REVENGE WARRIORS, then sold the stolen electronics on eBay and Craigslist, earning over a million dollars in a matter of months. When arrested, the feds seized their bank accounts and all the contents of a storage locker rented by the team that contained another million dollars in stolen goods.
5. Identify the constitutional amendment and the right that acts as a safeguard to assure that criminal procedure is fair in the following scenarios:
a. When garnishing the wages of a debtor, the court will notify the debtor of his right to a hearing to challenge the right of the creditor to take his property.
b. During a criminal trial, the defendant s attorney has the right to cross examine all witnesses, even if the witness is a child.
c. In any civil or criminal trial, a witness has the right to refuse to answer if the question asks him to admit facts that could be grounds to charge him with a crime.
d. Good grounds for appeal exist if a judge denies bail to a businessman charged with a white collar crime that has strong ties to the community, surrenders his passport and is not a flight risk.
e. When stopping cars for routine sobriety check, the police may not automatically search your car for contraband, unless you consent or the drugs are in plain sight.