Fundamentals of Criminal Law

There's more truth to the above quotation than you think. Criminal law is only a small part of the entire field of law, and one of the most recent, inconsistent, and undeveloped areas of law. A long time ago, tribal societies handled their differences in private. Some modern societies still do, like the civil law systems of France or Germany. The decisions over what was wrong and what was right were left in the hands of the people. Things like folkways, mores, customs, and norms took care of most problems.

By contrast, everything about criminal law in America today (defining, classifying, grading, prohibiting, and punishing) is in the hands of the legislature or law-making body for each jurisdiction. Crimes are "owned" by the state, prosecuted by the state in its own name, and the only thing separating a civil wrong from a criminal wrong is a fine line that exists only because the legislature says it exists.

To be fair, the government says it's doing it because of a duty or obligation to protect certain basic, underlying "societal interests" that cannot be taken care of by citizens themselves, who should be free to enjoy other, more sublime pursuits. This paternalistic stance is a rather rudimentary form of the idea of social contract. The idea of a social contract is very significant, but not without its critics. For example, some say it is a relatively weak philosophical position that doesn't benefit minorities very well (e.g., majority rule: minority right). It's in direct opposition to the idea of natural law, which among other things, holds that there are certain universal elements to morality and individual conscience that don't necessarily require the coercive power of the state or government to intervene in human affairs. Natural law also has its critics. For example, it unfortunately doesn't provide much guidance for rule-making and it doesn't benefit women very well (e.g., woman as caretaker to man). The Constitution of the United States is largely written in terms of natural law which acts as a check on social contract-oriented judge-made law which by its paternalistic nature is designed for the betterment of society. Sometimes, the way this combination works is called positive law since it moves society forward in a positive, betterment-oriented direction. However, there are differences in tone, as follows:

*Examples of Natural Law and Positive Law*
Natural Law	Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the freedom of speech or other forms of personal expression.
Positive Law	The judge ruled that the defendant had violated paragraph 101b of the Criminal Code for making obscene remarks via email and was sentenced to a precedent-setting 2 years in prison.

The best way to understand the "societal interests" that law serves is to look at the classification of statutory law system. Statutory law (sometimes called the written or codified law) is anything which takes the common law (the precedent-setting aspect of positive law) and turns it into something for which there is a need to have something written down. Written-down statutory law is essentially what gives the state or government power to intervene in human affairs, since the process of writing something down replaces any unspoken oral traditions or customs. This remarkably consistent scheme varies little from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and (with the possible exception newly emerging crime categories) has been around since the 16th Century and seems to have some utility.

*A Typical Statutory Law Scheme*
Crimes against the state	Treason, Sedition, Espionage	Protection of National Security
Crimes against persons	Murder, Manslaughter, Rape, Kidnapping, Assault, Battery	Protection of Persons against Violence
Crimes against habitation	Burglary, Arson, Home Invasion	Protection of Safety and Security in One's Home
Crimes against property	Theft, Larceny, Robbery, Vandalism, Forgery, Extortion, Fraud, Embezzlement	Protection of Private Property
Crimes against public order	Disorderly Conduct, Vagrancy, Incitement to Riot, Motor Vehicle Offenses, Alcohol & Drugs	Protection of the Public Peace, Order, and Safety
Crimes against administration of justice	Resisting Arrest, Obstruction of Justice, Bribery, Escape, Contempt of Court	Preserving Honest and Efficient Public Administration
Crimes against public morals	Prostitution, Sodomy, Obscenity, Incest, Indecent Exposure, Gambling, Alcohol & Drugs	Maintaining Traditional Morality
Crimes against nature	Bestiality, Animal Abuse	Maintaining Separation of Species, Public Health
Crimes against environment	Pollution, Fishing & Hunting, Smoking, Toxic Waste Dumping	Preserving Public Health and Natural Environment

It should be apparent by now that ALL CRIME IS AN INJURY AGAINST SOCIETY. Indeed, there doesn't even have to be a victim (victimless crimes) or someone to complain (consensual sex acts). Society as a whole, via its legislatures, has presumably made a collective judgment that certain behaviors are harmful to certain "societal interests." This bring us to the most important characteristic of Criminal Law, as follows:

The essence of criminal law is its common punishment (Hart 1958). No matter what the offense, from felony to misdemeanor to infraction or violation, the reaction expresses the moral contempt of society. Even for a minor traffic violation, there's always the slightest hint that one has injured society and broken the collective, agreed-upon rules. No matter how many times a parent scolds a child by saying "what would society think," it doesn't carry the same force as when it's carried by official reaction.

The concept of crime is closely tied to the idea of criminal law, but not in any simplistic way. The connections are best expressed in two ancient principles.

It would be an immense oversimplification to say something like "Crime is what the criminal law is all about." The reasons are twofold. First of all, the criminal law is not just about crime. To be sure, it defines crime and its elements, but it also attempts to create a positive incentive for conformity, in providing the impetus for voluntary, positive, moral action, or as Samaha (1999) puts it, "a last resort as a method of social control." It's useful to think of criminal law as a set of both proscriptive (prohibited) AND prescriptive (preferred) rules for conduct. This is best understood by the oxymoron "crimes of omission" and here's some examples of these prescriptive rules:

Although the above are technically crimes, it's best not to think of them too long as crimes. They are moral or ethical commitments best conceived of as the law behind the law (Gardner & Anderson 1996). They are supposed to compel people to conform to a higher standard of conduct which is prescribed, not proscribed by the criminal law. They are omissions, and in the religious sense, they are failures to do good (the alternate religious term being sins). They are what tie all societies together since every society has some concept of sin. Hence, it is more correct to say criminal law is about crime and sin. But, there's more; as seen next, the criminal law also has some unique functions toward human nature, almost as if it tries to positively direct it toward some ideal of perfection.

The human nature connection has to do with the second reason why crime and criminal law are not the same, which is because crime is all about blameworthiness, culpability, and a whole bunch of other concepts to be explained later. "Breaking the law" may involve a moral lapse, accident, or mistake. "Crime" ordinarily involves something deeper which is unjustifiable and inexcusable. Sometimes the distinction is made by saying that the criminal law is amoral (a set of impersonal, rational rules) and that crime always involves morality. Another way of saying this is that a person accused of crime is being tried for being a certain kind of person. So-called status offenses, like vagrancy and curfew violation, make it clear that certain stations or conditions in life are criminal in themselves. The status of "criminal" is supposed to be reserved for the worst outcasts from society, and the status of outcast cannot be achieved without the help of the criminal law.

To better understand the way criminal law manipulates statuses and roles in society, it is probably a good idea to understand the way the law classifies things. The oldest way of classifying crime is to make three (3) distinctions:

Another way of classifying crime is to focus on the potential penalties imposed:

The best way of classifying crime is to use a jurisprudential approach. Jurisprudence has many meanings, but generally refers to the science or philosophy of law as a whole. This method elucidates many of the more advanced concepts in criminal law. According to at least one legal scholar (Hall, 1949), any crime has 7 elements, which I will first list, and then go into detail by number. By definition, a crime consists of all the elements which make up the following sentence:

(#1) The concept of legality combines the two principles we learned earlier, and says there can be no crime without law. There must be public respect for the law, for the office if not the office-holders (which is the concept of legitimacy). Laws not based on societal norms are unlikely to gain general compliance. America's experiment with Prohibition from 1920-1933 is an example. If the principle of legality is maintained, governments can inflict pain on its citizens because it will be seen that those who are punished are those who deserved to be punished from a societal standpoint. So how does a government go about creating legality?

The answer is that there are at least three (3) ways, two of which are derived from the writings of classical thinkers like Jeremy Bentham and Max Weber, and another derived from an unknown, mysterious source.

(#2) The concept of Actus Reus (a phrase meaning evil or bad deed) is derived from an old Latin phrase, and in many ways, is what separates criminology from theology because as much as we might like to, those of us who work with criminals all the time cannot be concerned with, nor inclined to punish, bad thoughts. Government is not concerned with evil unless it is manifested in behavior. Religion is concerned with evil as manifested in thought.

It is important to understand the legal definition of "behavior." An involuntary jerk of the knee while having your reflexes checked is behavior, but not legal behavior. Psychologists also talk about being able to condition someone to do something, like make them brush their hair back while speaking, without their knowing about it. This is also not behavior in the legal sense. The word in social science that comes closest to the legal definition of behavior is "action." Action is always conscious, voluntary, and purposive behavior. There's a line in Shakespeare's Hamlet where the gravedigger ponders Ophelia's drowning, and asks "Did the water come to Ophelia or did Ophelia come to the water." The difference is one of accidental death vs. suicide. Or take guns, for instance, as with the question "Does the finger pull the trigger or does the trigger pull the finger." To take another example, lawyers would claim there's a good deal of difference between someone thrusting their sword into someone who is standing still, and someone holding their sword outstretched while the victim comes running into it. The "action" you see, is different in each case and for each party to the crime, and although you and I may think it's splitting hairs, it's quite an important part of legal reasoning.

There are certain criminal offenses where the act alone is all that's necessary to convict someone. These are called strict liability crimes (as opposed to true crimes which require both body and mind). Examples of strict liability include weapon offenses, traffic offenses, drug & alcohol offenses, public health laws, corporate crime, and littering. There's no need to prove an accompanying mental state because the criminal law imposes liability without fault. Notice I said without fault, not without blame. Such laws came about during the 1930s to better protect the public and workers from unsafe products and unsafe working conditions. The tradeoff in this arrangement is that strict liability offenses are usually only punishable by a fine, certain time periods for adjudicating the punishment, and various restrictions on non-sentencing factors as well as the right to appeal. Minimal social stigma is supposed to attach, but some have argued that this is the most controversial area of criminal law (Simons 1997).

There's more. From a legal point of view "communication" is a form of action. A whole set of laws exist for what are called inchoate crimes (incomplete crimes), such as conspiracy, attempt, possession, solicitation, terrorist threats, assault, sexual harassment, inciting to riot, aiding and abetting, and being an accomplice or accessory. Once again, mental state is largely irrelevant because the criminal statutes have usually described the behavior so well that the principle of vicarious liability applies. Anybody who participates in the planning, design, or coverup of a crime is subject to the same penalties as a person who actually carries it out. This is a controversial area, and in all fairness, some statutes require a combination of communication (words) and conduct (deeds), but then again, once you open the door to combinations, evidence of bad thoughts may even be admissible. The closest term we have for when wicked thoughts are assumed to apply to the act (and the intent) is malice. Malice is among the many things which can be inferred from other evidence and imputed to a defendant. It may be more a concept of folk law than anything else.

(#3) The concept of Causation is one of the more advanced concepts in criminal law. An act by itself is not punishable in itself because it's assumed to be the cause of something else, the effect, or social harm that the criminal law is presumably more concerned with, and all crimes are cause and effect relationships. Establishing a cause-and-effect relationship is no simple matter with legal reasoning, or for that matter in any social science. Suppose, for example, you beat up somebody, knocked them unconscious, and threw them in a dumpster. You walk off, and a few minutes later, a garbage truck comes down the alley, empties the dumpster, and crushes the poor fellow to death. Who killed him? You or the garbage truck driver? (Other examples: hospital infections, surgery complications, being run over, bitten by a dog, exposure to elements, struck by lightening).

The most important types of causes in Criminal Law are "causes in fact" (also called direct causes), proximate causes (also called legal causes), intervening causes, and superceding causes. Each of these have special rules or tests designed for them:

Direct cause	*The "but for" test -- The accused's act will be the cause in fact of a result if, but for* the accused's act, the result would not have occured.**
Proximate cause	The "foreseeability" test -- If it is foreseeable that the resulting harm might occur, then the person doing the original criminal act is responsible for the consequences.
Intervening cause	*The general rule is that the accused will remain responsible for the original criminal act even if there are intervening causes* between the actus reus and actual injury.**
Superceding cause	The general rule is that the chain of causation is broken, and the accused is not responsible, if there is a superceding cause so unforeseen and unpredictable that it would not be fair to hold the original actor to blame.

As an example, let's take the concept of intervening cause. It is perhaps the most common type of cause learned by lawyers. One of the legal tests for causation turns on whether an intervening act was "abnormal" or not. If something is abnormal, the result of an act would be X, but if the act was not abnormal, then the result would be Y. However, in legal reasoning, there are differences between abnormal, "not abnormal," clumsy as that phrase is, and "normal." It has to do with the difference between OPPOSITES AND NEGATIONS. In English, an antonym is usually the same as an opposite, but often there's a spectrum of some phenomena (e.g., short to tall) where the antonym is NOT the opposite. Many adjectives have both an antonym and a negation. The antonym of "tall," for instance, is "short" because it's at the other extreme of the height spectrum from "tall." But the negative of "tall" is not "short." Many people, after all, are neither short nor tall, but somewhere in the middle. The negative of tall includes both the short and the ones in the middle. Thus, "not tall" means something different from "short." Furthermore, "abnormal," doesn't quite mean "not normal" since there are things in-between normal and abnormal. Likewise, "not unhappy" is not the same as "happy." Fortunately, "illegal" pretty much means "not legal" under most forms of legal reasoning, although many lawyers would argue there are shades in-between.

(#4) The concept of social harm is a fairly undeveloped concept in criminal Law, and it's what separates criminology from victimology. The criminal law exists for a public purpose, not private purposes. The criminal law is not concerned with the protection or vindication of individual victims, but rather society as a whole. The general rule has always been if a victim wants compensation, they should sue the offender after the state gets done with them. The problem, of course, is that most offenders are broke. There has been a trend in recent years to incorporate more victim assistance, compensation, and restitution in the plea bargaining stage of criminal justice. The additional problem is that there are a whole set of laws called victimless crimes, such as sodomy, fornication, adultery, cohabitation, obscenity, fortune-telling, dueling, loan-sharking, gambling, drunkenness, and drug use, where only some of the American people believe society is the victim. The law is not supposed to cave in to public opinion, but take the examples of abortion or drug legalization, and you begin to see what the problems are from not clearly articulating social harm. Progress on the victimology front is fine, but there are more serious "law and order" problems that can only be addressed by development of this concept.

It's conceivable that development of the concept is stiffled because of a one-sided focus on street crime at the expense of Suite crime. While the average take of a street robber may be $25, American citizens won't recover from the effects of white-collar crimes like the Savings & Loan bailout until Social Security runs out.

(#5) The concept of concurrence requires that any act (actus reus) causing social harm must coincide, or be accompanied, with a criminal state of mind (mens rea). Both act and intent must concur in point of time. It's part of a basic formula in criminal law:

There must exist a fusion, a coming together of act and intent. Normally, the intent comes first in time, leading to the carrying out of the act. For example, it is not murder to accidently shoot someone and rejoice afterwards because mens rea follows actus reus. Another example: suppose your friend tells you to meet her at her house, and if she's late, to go ahead and break the lock on the door. OK, you do that, and once inside, you decide to steal her VCR. You have not committed burglary because your intent to steal came after breaking and entering. There is no specific length of time that the intent must exist prior to the act, only that they come together concurrently.

The legal requirement of concurrence is usually taken care of by proving Motive. Intent and motive are not the same thing. In criminal law, motive is that which leads or tempts the mind to indulge in a criminal act, such as an impulse, incentive, or reason for commiting the crime. Intent is the mind being fully aware of the consequences. Many criminal statutes require intent as an element of the crime, but motive is never stated as an essential element of a crime in any criminal statute. Motive can be used to assist in establishing intent, but more likely, motive is introduced as a piece of evidence, often circumstantial, admitted along with evidence of opportunity, to impress the judge or jury. The presence of motive is evidence tending to presume guilt, and the absence of motive is evidence tending to presume innocence.

(#6) The concept of mens rea (a phrase meaning evil or bad mind) is a well-developed concept, and perhaps the most complex and confusing concept in criminal law. Several problems contribute to this complexity. All 50 states are free to establish their own precedent which results in disparate requirements of intent for similar crimes, there are distinctly different common law and Model Penal Code (MPC) definitions of mens rea, the notion of blameworthiness is not precisely attached to certain types of mens rea and indeed may be more useful in defenses to crime, and finally, to successfully prosecute a case, a different type of mens rea may be needed to help establish the actus reus, concurrence, or other circumstance element stated in the criminal statute.

The best way to understand mens rea (often mislabeled Intent) is to realize that it is always invisible. You can't really prove intent like you can with motive. You also can't really blame someone for their motive (it's understandable), only for their intent. Intent is different for every person and for every case, and it's impossible as well as futile to get inside the "mind" of each and every criminal offender. Confessions are the closest thing to direct evidence of mens rea, and even then, they must be corroborated. Therefore, the criminal law has established certain objective tests for inferring the subjective mental state (intent) of criminal offenders. To do this requires certain assumptions about responsibility, and by adding in the rules for inferring intent, called determining culpability, we arrive at a way to attach blameworthiness.

Let's take the assumptions about responsibility first. It's easy. This is a given in criminal law. The entire criminal justice system operates on the assumption of free will. Much to the chagrin of psychologists, sociologists, and sociobiologists who have argued for years that human behavior is determined by forces beyond individual control, the criminal justice system assumes that every human being possesses free will and makes choices that they must be responsible for. Notice I didn't say "accountable for" because we haven't yet reached the point where we can attach blame. The free will assumption has been called the theoretical underpinning of criminal law. It's important to understand the theory before making any assessment of it.

Without getting into philosophical notions of Justice, there are two down-to-earth reasons for the free will assumption. One is that the system could not operate efficiently if we took the time to closely examine the psychological makeup of each and every individual. The second reason is that there is a whole other side to the justice system, called defenses, which offer more than enough safeguards, along with things like the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, to justify an assumption that crime is always a behavior that is freely chosen. Now all this doesn't mean that judges and lawyers don't believe in the influence of genetic, psychological, or environmental influences on human behavior. It just means that, for purposes of having a workable operating assumption, we have carved out criminal behavior from the dimension of all human behavior and decreed that this thing we call crime shall be considered as freely chosen from now on.

Traditionally, this stance has been softened somewhat by mutually agreed-upon recognitions. Notice I didn't say "exceptions." There are no exceptions to the free will assumption. However, there are the "Three I's" of Insanity, Infancy, and Involuntary. The criminal law "recognizes" to varying degrees that insane people, extremely young people, and those with certain involuntary "medical" conditions should NOT be assumed to be responsible for their actions. These are best understood as special defenses that get to the idea of voluntariness of acts, or volition (the ability to exercise free will). Insanity and infancy are fairly self-explanatory, but the following is a list of involuntary "medical" conditions: reflexive behavior, unconscious behavior, behavior while asleep (sleepwalking), convulsive behavior (epilepsy), and involuntary intoxication (drugged against your will).

Now we're ready to take up the notion of culpability (faulting or blaming someone for the way their "mind" works). That definition I've provided in parentheses should stop and give you pause as to what precarious ground we're on with concepts like mental fault. Let's start with the common law approaches and then look at the MPC approach, both in tabular form. Most lawyers are trained in the common law approach because the MPC method is fairly recent and hasn't caught on as much as it should.

At common law, basic distinctions are made between at least six (6) different types of intent: General Intent, Specific Intent, Strict Liability, Transferred Liability, Constructive Liability, and Scienter. All crimes contain general intent, but some crimes only contain specific intent or involve other forms of intent.

General intent	The kind of intent which a judge or jury can easily infer or presume from the act itself. The intended result doesn't matter. The prosecution need not establish why the crime occured. It must be shown, however, that the defendant had an "awareness" of a criminal act being committed. Battery is a good example because the extent of injuries or why the fight started doesn't matter.
Specific intent	The kind of intent that legislatures have put in the language of the criminal statute. Usually requires a particular result beyond the act itself, such as "with purpose to defraud an insurance company" in the crime of arson for profit. Requires prosecution to prove additional elements and cannot be presumed by a judge or jury.
Strict Liability intent	Involves regulatory crimes where intent doesn't matter at all. Intent is not an element of the crime. It is immaterial whether the accused acted in good faith or knew they were violating the law. The prosecution doesn't have to prove the defendant knew their mail order package contained drugs or child pornography, for example.
Transferred Liability intent	Involves cases where the accused intended to harm one victim but instead harmed another. Relieves prosecution of the need to prove chain of events leading to harm. Basis of felony-murder rule.
Constructive intent	Involves cases where the accused should have known their behavior created a high or unreasonable risk of injury. Also called criminal negligence, and replaces any specific intent contained in statute, thereby constructing or converting an innocent act to a crime.
Scienter	A requirement in some statutes that the accused had some additional degree of knowledge beyond knowing a possible criminal act was being commiting. Examples include knowing that the victim is a law enforcement officer, knowing that the materials were stolen property, or knowing that the hitchhiker was an escaped fugitive.

Somewhat simpler and easier-to-understand is the MPC approach. Not all states use these words, and where known, I've worked the synonymous word into the definition and indicated it by quotation marks. They are arranged from the highest degree of mental fault to the lowest.

Purposely	When a person's conscious objective is to engage in a particular act or accomplish a particular result. They are behaving "intentionally" with respect to the attendant circumstances they are aware of or believe to exist at the time. Requires prosecution to show what was going thru the accused's mind at the time.
Knowingly	When a person knows the nature of their conduct will necessarily lead to a particular result. It means "willfully" carrying out a design or plan as a conscious exercise of their will. Requires prosecution to show what was going thru the accused's mind at the time.
Recklessly	When a person consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that grossly deviates from a standard of care that a reasonable person would follow under the circumstances. Requires prosecution to show what was going thru the accused's mind at the time AND show what a reasonable person would do under the circumstances.
Negligently	When a person fails to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that dangerous circumstances exist or a prohibited result will follow. Such failure is also a substantial deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would follow under the circumstances. Requires prosecution to show what a reasonable person would do under the circumstances.

(#7) The concept of Punishment in Criminal Law must satisfy at least 4 criteria. Any penalty imposed must be:

In addition, it would be nice if punishment had a philosophical rationale, like retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, or rehabilitation. These are sometimes referred to as the goals of criminal law, and it would be an amazing feat of civilization if we could finally settle on one or the other. Here's a brief synopsis of the leading contenders:

Retribution	Assumes that criminals deserve to be punished, mostly by long prison terms, as legal revenge for their harm to society. The modern "just deserts" approach considers it proper to punish because they deserve it and the state has gone to the trouble of prescribing a punishment for them.
Incapacitation	Attempts to make it theoretically impossible, either thru incarceration, execution, castration, mutilation, banishment, or other means, for criminals to prey any further upon society.
Deterrence	Assumes that fearful penalties, mostly involving swift restraint, harsh conditions, and certain guilt, will prevent people from choosing to engage in crime. Specific deterrence focuses on individual criminals, and general deterrence focuses on potential criminals.
Rehabilitation	Emphasizes the possibility of change, mostly involving treatment programs, that has as an end result the ideal of being able to convert criminals into noncriminals.

It is also useful to have a range of penalties, and a systematic way of sentencing similar cases to similar penalties in that range. Here's the range as it currently exists in most advanced societies:

Death Penalty	Lethal injection, electrocution, exposure to lethal gas, hanging, or other method.
Incarceration	Physical confinement in a prison, jail, or other locked-up facility.
Probation	A set of specific rules of conduct while in the community, and supervision of compliance with those rules.
Split Sentence	A brief period of shocking confinement followed by a period of probation.
Restitution	Making the offender provide financial repayment or other services for losses incurred by the victim.
Community Service	Making the offender perform public service work, like picking up trash.
Fines	Economic penalties requiring the payment of fixed sums of money.

INTERNET RESOURCES
Dr. O'Connor's Mega-Guide to the Study of Law
Dr. Tavel's MegaLaw Page
Legal Dictionary

PRINTED RESOURCES
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Hart, H. (1958). "The Aims of the Criminal Law" Law and Contemporary Problems 23: 403-405.
McConnell, M. et al. (Eds.) (2001). Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
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Samaha, J. (1999). Criminal Law. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth.
Simons, K. (1997). "When is strict criminal liability just?" Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 87(4): 1075-1137.
Solan, L. & Tiersma, P. (2005). Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
West Publishing Company. (1984). The Guide to American Law: Everyone's Legal Encyclopedia. St. Paul: West Publishing.

Last updated: Sept. 19, 2007
Not an official webpage of APSU, copyright restrictions apply, see Megalinks in Criminal Justice
O'Connor, T. (Date of Last Update at bottom of page). In Part of web cited (Windows name for file at top of browser), MegaLinks in Criminal Justice. Retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/rest of URL accessed on today's date.

nullum crimen sine poena	<=>	no crime without punishment
nulla poena sine lege	<=>	no punishment without law