First-Year Law Students' Examination (FYLSX / Baby Bar) Criminal Law Syllabus

Criminal Law syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Criminal Law in First-Year Law Students' Examination (FYLSX / Baby Bar), not a summary of it.

1. 1

   General Principles of Liability

   4 topics

   • Actus Reus
     • Voluntary act requirement
     • Omissions and legal duty to act
     • Possession as an act
   • Mens Rea
     • Common law: malice, intent, willfulness
     • Model Penal Code: purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently
     • Specific vs. general intent
     • Strict liability offenses
     • Transferred intent
   • Concurrence of Act and Intent
   • Causation
     • Actual (but-for) cause
     • Proximate cause and intervening causes
2. 2

   Homicide

   3 topics

   • Common Law Murder
     • Intent to kill
     • Intent to inflict serious bodily harm
     • Depraved heart (reckless indifference)
     • Felony murder
   • Statutory Degrees of Murder
     • First-degree: premeditation and deliberation
     • Second-degree murder
   • Manslaughter
     • Voluntary manslaughter and adequate provocation
     • Involuntary manslaughter (criminal negligence and misdemeanor-manslaughter)
3. 3

   Crimes Against Persons and Property

   3 topics

   • Crimes Against the Person
     • Battery and aggravated battery
     • Assault
     • Kidnapping and false imprisonment
     • Rape and statutory rape
   • Theft Crimes
     • Larceny and larceny by trick
     • Embezzlement
     • False pretenses
     • Robbery and extortion
     • Receiving stolen property
   • Crimes Against the Habitation
     • Burglary (common law and modern)
     • Arson
4. 4

   Inchoate Crimes and Parties

   5 topics

   • Solicitation
   • Conspiracy
     • Agreement and overt act
     • Pinkerton co-conspirator liability
     • Wharton's rule
     • Withdrawal
   • Attempt
     • Specific intent and substantial step
     • Legal vs. factual impossibility
     • Abandonment
   • Parties to Crime
     • Principals and accomplices (aiding and abetting)
     • Accessory after the fact
   • Merger Doctrine
5. 5

   Defenses

   4 topics

   • Justification Defenses
     • Self-defense and defense of others
     • Defense of property
     • Necessity
   • Excuse Defenses
     • Insanity: M'Naghten, irresistible impulse, MPC, Durham
     • Voluntary and involuntary intoxication
     • Infancy
     • Duress
   • Mistake
     • Mistake of fact
     • Mistake of law
   • Entrapment
6. 6

   Constitutional Criminal Procedure Overview

   3 topics

   • Fourth Amendment
     • Search, seizure, and reasonable expectation of privacy
     • Warrant requirement and exceptions
     • Exclusionary rule and fruit of the poisonous tree
   • Fifth Amendment
     • Miranda warnings and custodial interrogation
     • Privilege against self-incrimination
   • Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel

Criminal Law flashcards for First-Year Law Students' Examination (FYLSX / Baby Bar)

21 of 62 cards from the Criminal Law deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. What is the actus reus of a crime, and what are its two possible forms?

   Actus reus is the physical, voluntary act (or qualifying omission) that constitutes a crime. It requires either (1) a voluntary bodily movement, or (2) a failure to act (omission) where there is a legal duty to act.

2. When does a failure to act (omission) create criminal liability?

   Only when there is a legal duty to act, the defendant has knowledge of the facts giving rise to the duty, and it is reasonably possible to perform the duty. Duties arise from: statute, contract, special relationship, voluntary assumption of care, or creation of the peril.

3. Define mens rea and identify the four Model Penal Code (MPC) mental states from most to least culpable.

   Mens rea is the guilty state of mind required for a crime. The four MPC states, most to least culpable: (1) Purposely (conscious objective), (2) Knowingly (aware conduct is practically certain to cause result), (3) Recklessly (conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk), (4) Negligently (should have been aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk).

4. Distinguish specific intent, general intent, and malice crimes at common law.

   Specific intent crimes require intent to do a further act or achieve a specific result (e.g., burglary, larceny, attempt). General intent crimes require only awareness of acting (e.g., battery, rape). Malice crimes (murder, arson) require reckless disregard of an obvious or high risk of harm.

5. What is the significance of identifying a crime as a 'specific intent' crime?

   Specific intent crimes allow additional defenses unavailable to general intent crimes: voluntary intoxication and unreasonable (honest) mistake of fact can negate the required specific intent.

6. What is a strict liability crime?

   A strict liability crime requires no mens rea as to at least one material element; the act alone establishes guilt. Common examples are statutory rape, public welfare/regulatory offenses, and selling liquor to minors. Mistake of fact is not a defense.

7. What does the concurrence principle require in criminal law?

   The defendant must possess the required mental state (mens rea) at the same time as he commits the criminal act (actus reus), and the mental state must actuate (cause) the act.

8. What are the two types of causation required for result crimes, and how is each defined?

   (1) Actual (factual) cause: the result would not have occurred 'but for' the defendant's act. (2) Proximate (legal) cause: the result was a foreseeable/natural consequence of the act, not interrupted by an unforeseeable superseding intervening cause.

9. How do dependent (responsive) and independent (coincidental) intervening causes affect proximate cause?

   A dependent intervening cause (a response to defendant's act, e.g., negligent medical care) does NOT break the chain unless it is abnormal/unforeseeable. An independent intervening cause (coincidental, e.g., a random act) DOES break the chain unless it was foreseeable.

10. Define common law murder.

    Common law murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought.

11. What are the four types of malice aforethought that satisfy common law murder?

    (1) Intent to kill, (2) Intent to inflict great bodily harm, (3) Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life ('depraved heart' / abandoned and malignant heart), and (4) Intent to commit a felony (felony murder).

12. What is felony murder?

    Felony murder is a killing, even an accidental one, committed during the commission or attempted commission of an inherently dangerous felony. The malice for murder is supplied by the intent to commit the underlying felony.

13. What felonies typically qualify for felony murder (the 'BARRK' felonies)?

    Burglary, Arson, Rape, Robbery, and Kidnapping (the inherently dangerous felonies). Some jurisdictions use 'BARK' or add mayhem.

14. List the major limitations on the felony murder rule.

    (1) The underlying felony must be inherently dangerous; (2) the felony must be independent of the killing (merger doctrine bars assault-based felonies); (3) death must be foreseeable; (4) death must occur during commission/flight before reaching a place of temporary safety; and (5) under the agency theory, the killing must be by a felon, not by a victim or police (redline limitation).

15. How do statutes typically divide murder into first and second degree?

    First-degree murder: deliberate and premeditated killing, or killing by an enumerated means (poison, lying in wait, torture), or felony murder of an enumerated felony. Second-degree murder: all other murders (the 'default' murder), including depraved-heart and intent-to-cause-serious-bodily-harm killings.

16. What do 'deliberation' and 'premeditation' mean for first-degree murder?

    Premeditation means the defendant reflected on the idea of killing (even briefly). Deliberation means the defendant made the decision to kill in a cool and dispassionate manner. Together they require a reflective, intentional killing.

17. Define voluntary manslaughter.

    Voluntary manslaughter is an intentional killing that would be murder but is mitigated because it was committed in the heat of passion upon adequate provocation, or under an honest but unreasonable belief in the need for self-defense (imperfect self-defense).

18. What are the four elements of adequate provocation (heat of passion) for voluntary manslaughter?

    (1) Provocation that would arouse sudden and intense passion in an ordinary person (objective); (2) the defendant was in fact provoked (subjective); (3) insufficient time to cool off between provocation and killing (objective); and (4) the defendant in fact did not cool off (subjective).

19. Define involuntary manslaughter and its two main theories.

    Involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing resulting from (1) criminal negligence (gross deviation from the standard of care / recklessness), or (2) the misdemeanor-manslaughter rule (a killing during the commission of a misdemeanor or a non-BARRK felony).

20. Define common law battery.

    Battery is the unlawful application of force to the person of another resulting in either bodily injury or an offensive touching. It is a general intent crime.

21. Define common law assault and its two forms.

    Assault is either (1) an attempt to commit a battery (specific intent), or (2) the intentional creation, other than by mere words, of a reasonable apprehension in the victim's mind of imminent bodily harm (general intent).

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