Guilt (law)
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Factual guilt vs. legal guilt
In the United States, there exists factual guilt and legal guilt. Factual guilt relates to a person having factually committed a crime. This implies that the person fulfilled the requirements necessary for the offense to have occurred, such as the elements of the crime and their constitutive philosophical framework. However, it is not possible to prove that someone has factually committed a crime. Relative to this inability to conclusively prove factual guilt, the Münchhausen trilemma exemplifies that it is impossible to prove any truth. As it is impossible to prove factual guilt, a prosecutor must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant has committed a crime. As such, the prosecutor is required to prove the defendant's legal guilt.
The factfinder(s) in a criminal court case, through encountering evidence, determines whether there is sufficient evidence to substantiate a finding that the defendant committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. This may or may not be a reasonable finding, however. Thus, although a defendant may be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (thus, found legally guilty) of having committed a crime, such as to substantiate a conviction, such a finding does not necessarily imply that the defendant was factually found legally guilty. Related to this matter are convictions in criminal cases that are overturned by new evidence (such as in DNA exoneration cases), such that the finding of legal guilt is found by a different factfinder to have been unreasonable; thus, legal guilt is found to have not been factually found or substantiated: This new finding itself, however, is not necessarily factual either.
Attribution of guilt as a social function
Philosophically, guilt in criminal law reflects a functioning society and its ability to condemn individuals' actions. It rests fundamentally on a presumption of free will, such as from a compatibilist perspective (as in the U.S.A.), in which individuals choose actions and are, therefore, subjected to the external judgement of the rightness or wrongness of those actions. As described by Judge Alvin B. Rubin in United States v. Lyons (1984):
An adjudication of guilt is more than a factual determination that the defendant pulled a trigger, took a bicycle, or sold heroin. It is a moral judgment that the individual is blameworthy. Our collective conscience does not allow punishment where it cannot impose blame. Our concept of blameworthiness rests on assumptions that are older than the Republic: man is naturally endowed with these two great faculties, understanding and liberty of will. Historically, our substantive criminal law is based on a theory of punishing the viscious [sic] will. It postulates a free agent confronted with a choice between doing right and wrong, and choosing freely to do wrong.[3]
Moral and legal definitions
"Guilt" is the obligation of a person who has violated a moral standard to bear the sanctions imposed by that moral standard. In legal terms, guilt means having been found to have violated a criminal law,[1] though the law also raises 'the issue of defences, pleas, the mitigation of offences, and the defeasibility of claims'.[4]
Les Parrott draws a three-fold distinction between "objective or legal guilt, which occurs when society's laws have been broken... social guilt...[over] an unwritten law of social expectation", and finally the way "personal guilt occurs when someone compromises one's own standards".[5]
Remedies
Guilt can sometimes be remedied by:
Law does not usually accept the agent's
See also
References
- ^ a b "guilt", The Free Dictionary, retrieved 2021-12-18
- ^ See generally United States v. Rivera-Gomez, 67 F.3d 993, 997 (1st Cir. 1995).
- ^ UNITED STATES v. LYONS, 739 F.2d 994, 995 (5th Cir. 1984) (Rubin, J. dissenting) (internal citations omitted).
- ^ Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (Penguin 1972) p. 139
- ^ Les Parrott, Shoulda Coulda Woulda (2003) p. 87
- ^ Parrott, p. 152-3
- ^ see cognitive therapy under Cognitive therapy
- ^ E. R. Smith/D. M. Mackie, Social Psychology (2007) p. 527-8
- ^ Fenichel, p. 502
External links
- "Guilt in Think On These Things". Archived from the original on January 17, 2006. Retrieved 2006-02-16. by Gary Gilley
- "The Innocent Bear the Guilt for the Guilty Ones". Retrieved 2007-05-10. by Gerd Altendorff translation by Jochen Reiss
- Learnt or innate
- Guilt on In Our Time at the BBC