Understanding Liberty
True Crime Explained
This month we will consider what constitutes a “true” crime as opposed to a “legislative” crime. As discussed recently, America is over-criminalized. Anything and everything is considered a crime, merely because legislation bans something on pain of punishment. But under the laws of nature, justice, and the Common Law, there are only a limited number of actual crimes.
This month we will consider what constitutes a “true” crime as opposed to a “legislative” crime. As discussed recently, America is over-criminalized. Anything and everything is considered a crime, merely because legislation bans something on pain of punishment. But under the laws of nature, justice, and the Common Law, there are only a limited number of actual crimes.
On this earth, there are three forms of law: God’s law, to which the Natural Law belongs, Natural Law, and man’s law. God’s law belongs to God and His appointed servants on earth, since it involves offenses against God and His commandments. See D&C 134:4
The Natural Law governs all men, and its subordinate, man’s law, which cannot contradict Natural Law, governs the various groups of men on the face of the earth, according to their individual situations. Both govern ONLY offenses against man, the violations of his equal rights. Because God is all just and all merciful, a perfect Being, offenses against his law belong to Him to judge and punish; man cannot touch them (see Mosiah 29:12), inasmuch as the offense is not against man. But man’s law may judge and punish offenses against man, for man’s safety.
God’s law provides a savior for those who violate it, receiving mercy while Christ’s Atonement satisfies justice if the sinner repents. But there is very little to no mercy in man’s law, which lacks a savior. Man’s law tends to know only justice. Therefore, in order to protect the innocent, including those who commit an offense against man unintentionally, the principal of intent and a violation of one’s equal rights are vital requirements for man’s criminal law because justice demands them in a case of no savior and thus no escape from the law. There must be a guilty act AND a guilty mind.
Thus, justice requires in man’s law, in order to be considered a crime, two things: 1.) a victim, another human being whose equal rights have been violated, and 2.) intent to commit such harm. An intentional offense against another human being, intending to harm the other individual in his/her equal rights is the only thing that can be considered a crime under man’s law. If there is no harm of another’s equal rights, there is no crime. If there is no intent, yet there is still a victim, there is still no crime. A crime must have both requirements; else-wise there is no crime. And if not a crime, then it is a tort, which will require restitution, usually through civil damages, but cannot justly require loss of life, liberty or property to the hands of the state.
William Blackstone, the famed English jurist who wrote the highly influential “Commentaries of the Laws of England,” an exposition of the English Common Law, which was adopted by the U.S., wrote in 1765:
“To make a complete crime cognizable by human laws, there must be both a will and an act. For though ... a fixed design or will to do an unlawful act is almost as heinous as the commission of it, yet, as no temporal tribunal can search the heart, or fathom the intentions of the mind, otherwise than as they are demonstrated by outward actions, it therefore cannot punish for what it cannot know. For which reason in all temporal jurisdictions an overt act, or some open evidence of an intended crime, is necessary in order to demonstrate the depravity of the will, before the man is liable to punishment. And, as a vicious will, without a vicious act is no civil crime, so, on the other hand, an unwarrantable act without a vicious will is no crime at all. So that to constitute a crime against human laws, there must be, first, a vicious will; and, secondly, an unlawful act consequent upon such a vicious will.”
America’s criminal law used to include these Common Law requirements of a true crime, but it has since abandoned it, making what ever it wants a crime, regardless of whether there is a victim or intent. Most traffic laws and Utah’s new cell phone law are blatant examples. But let’s consider a more interesting example: manslaughter.
In most states, including Utah, manslaughter is the accidental killing of another human being without intent, and is considered a Second Degree Felony in Utah, punishable with not less than one year but up to 15 years in prison plus a possible fine (Utah State Code, Title 76, Ch. 5, Sect. 205 and Ch. 3, Sect. 203).
Yet, we read in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 19, that the Israelites, God’s chosen people where commanded by God to set apart three separate cities in their land of inheritance, Canaan, for those who commit manslaughter to flee to and live, so that “innocent blood” might not be shed in the promised land of Israel by the family of the slain.
Yet what does America do, God’s chosen land for his chosen people today? And what does Utah do, populated as it is by God’s chosen people of today, the Latter Day Saints? We have built prisons instead of refuge cities for the committer of manslaughter, punishing unjustly those who accidentally kill, and therefore commit no crime due to lack of criminal intent. We throw those who are innocent in God’s eyes into dark, damp cells, to languish and rot, where they have more of a chance of becoming actual criminals due to the prison environment that they would have outside its walls. We pass unjust pieces of legislation, falsely criminalizing what apparently is to God a non-criminal act... negligent, perhaps, and requiring restitution, but non-criminal all the same. This is because we have bought into the falsehood that any act, any word, or any thought can be criminal, simply because legislation says so, and because men with guns force it upon us.
To fix the over-criminalization of America, let’s reinstate in our criminal codes, state, and federal, these two Common Law requirements of criminal acts.