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The Anatomy of Disgust in Criminal Law

February 15, 2019August 10, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Judgments of and about disgust play a critical role in criminal law. Certain homicides, including homophobic ones, may be graded more severely or less because they are motivated by disgust; certain forms of punishment, including shaming penalties, express public disgust with criminals; and certain sentencing regimes, including those that use the "outrageously or wantonly vile" standard, treat an offender's own appetite for disgust as a ground for capital punishment. Yet disgust has received almost no systematic attention from criminal law theorists. This essay seeks to remedy this inattention by drawing on William Miller's The Anatomy of Disgust (1997). Miller depicts disgust not as an unthinking or instinctive aversion, but rather as a cognitive evaluation that is constructed by, and that reinforces, hierarchic social norms. The centrality of such norms to moral perception explains the ubiquity of disgust judgments in criminal law; dissensus over the content of such norms accounts for the political controversy that disgust

7.3 Accessory

September 14, 2018October 4, 2017 by admin

As stated in Section 7.1.1 “Accomplice Liability”, at early common law, a defendant who helped plan the offense but was not present at the scene when the principal committed the crime was an accessory before the fact. A defendant who helped the principal avoid detection after the principal committed the crime was an accessory after the fact. In modern times, an accessory before the fact is an accomplice, and an accessory after the fact is an accessory, which is a separate and distinct offense. Some states still call the crime of accessory “accessory after the fact” (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 274, 2011) or “hindering prosecution” (Haw. Rev. Stat., 2011).