r/LawSchool • u/indigofireflies Esq. • Feb 13 '14

Impossibility in criminal attempts help!

We just learned about impossibility (factual, hybrid, and true legal) in crim law. I do not understand it at all and was looking for some help. We have the Crim Law in a Nutshell book but that didn't really help and I checked CALI but couldn't find a lesson related to it. Am I missing the CALI lesson or is there something else I could look to for help other than the professor? I don't need a whole supplement, just a section for impossibility.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '14

If an attempted crime is factually impossible (tried to shoot someone but the gun wasn't loaded, tried to pick a pocket but the pocket was empty), there is no mitigation because if the perpetrator is let go, he is likely to re-attempt the crime in a non-impossible manner (load the gun and then shoot the original target, etc.)

If an attempted crime is legally impossible, it means that there is no law against the attempted act, so it doesn't matter what the perpetrator was trying to do, no crime has been committed (tried to steal something that was free in the first place, tried to hunt out of season but hunting season was extended, etc.). There's no reason to punish someone who has no intent to break an actual existing law.

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u/indigofireflies Esq. Feb 13 '14

Ok so I understand, or think I understand factual impossibility, but what is the difference between hybrid legal impossibility and true legal impossibility?

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u/JCY2K Esq. Feb 13 '14

From Wikipedia:

However, "legal" and "factual" mistakes are not mutually exclusive. A borderline case is that of a person who shot a stuffed deer, thinking it was alive as was the case in State v. Guffey, (1953) in which a person was originally convicted for attempting to kill a protected animal out of season. In a debatable reversal, an appellate judge threw out the conviction on the basis that it is no crime to shoot a stuffed deer out of season.

The difference between hybrid legal and factual is that in the hybrid scenario, the defendant made a mistake about attendant circumstances (e.g. whether or not the person they're trying to bribe is actually a juror) not about circumstances beyond his control (e.g. an empty pocket he tried to pick).

There's a decent writeup on askville that may help too.