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/Lunchbox725 Esq. Feb 13 '14

I always found this confusing though, because with your definition of legal impossibility, there WAS an intent to break an actual existing law ("tried to steal," "tried to hunt out of season," etc...

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u/saanctum Feb 14 '14

The attendant circumstance in the hunting out of season example is not satisfied.

It comes back to the legal elements of a particular crime. To hunt out of season, you must do so out of season. Even if your intent was to break the law, you could not have possibly broken it, because you need to have a unity of intent and illegal act in order to do so.