Can one action be two crimes?

[illram]

It's a confusing question because you stipulate to no legal answers, but the question involves hypothetical "laws" and the answer involves coming to a conclusion based on them.

But perhaps to get to your point (is this what you're exploring?): A crime and doing something morally wrong are two distinct things, in my opinion.

 

[Evie]

Morally speaking, though, there is only one action, and the Mens Rea usually concern the action taken as a whole, and not each separate compoment (though it's certainly possible to have the deliberate intent of breaking two laws, as opposed to the intent of taking one action which happen to involve components that violate several law). If you only intend to carry out one action, then morally speaking there is but one criminal action; one crime.

However, this one criminal action then has to be characterized in legal terms, which essentially involve taking the action and showing in what ways it broke the law. This can allow for a number of combinations. For example, in your example above, perhaps I thought based on credible information that the gun, while realistic looking, would only fire blank shots; in this case in some jurisdictions the charges may end up being discharging a gun at someone and involuntary manslaughter, which is a different combination than discharging a gun at someone and second-degree murder (in the heat of the moment), and still a different combination than discharging a gun at someone and first-degree murder (premeditated), and still different from discharging a gun at someone and injuring them, and discharging a weapon at someone and not even hitting. Since in some cases it's entirely possible to discharge a weapon in someone's direction with no intent to kill, "attempted murder" does not fit.

Thus why to characterize each crime the legal system use building bricks - charges - to assemble a description that fit the incident. How thorough that description is usually depend on the case and prosecutor, and plea bargain can often be used to get some less-damaging building bricks swapped in for more-damaging ones. (For example, in a murder trial, agreeing that you were really careless and took really dumb actions, while the prosecution agree that you weren't really trying to *kill*, thus resulting in you pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter rather than first- or second- degree murder).

 

[illram]

If you consider a moral wrong distinct from a crime, I think it becomes rather simple and is just a question on defining wrongs. For instance in the drunk driving example I think that could be two moral wrongs (being reckless and killing someone) as well as two (or more) crimes. But usually yes there will be less moral wrongs than crimes since defining legality in contexts like this is just a technical exercise.

 

[rollo1066]

Sure. The same action could be a crime against the State of Washington and also against the United States.

 

[Hygro]

Bumping, because this thread became relevant again. Sigh.

edit: I always wished VR had posted in this thread. Too bad he bounced.

 

[warpus]

I'd say that depends. In the case of 4) you already broke a law before you killed a guy - so that's two separate crimes, morally and legally.

In the case of 3) you broke a law when you *started* painting the house and a second one as soon as the swastika was finished

In the case of 2) I'd say you broke 2 laws, at the same time. They are both very distinct laws and they both apply.

In the case of 1) I am tempted to lean towards "one", but I gotta say "two"

So I'm not even sure if it depends.

 

[Hygro]

The scenarios are of course, to help one think it through. The main question itself is the important part!

 

[Evie]

As I said back then, it's ONE crime (criminal action) described as the violation of MULTIPLE laws.

The crime is the action that break one or more law. The charges describe the action(s) in term of which law were violated and which penalty they carry as a whole.

 

[BvBPL]

Even weirder than this discussion is the fact that blackmail consists of two legal activities that, taken together, are illegal.

 

[JollyRoger]

First case doesn't matter. I say one crime, murder. Murder's punishment is either death or life imprisonment anyway, the second crime is irrelevant.

Let's say that the killer was an ex-felon who had not had his 2nd Amendment "rights" restored. He beats the murder charge on self-defense grounds. Should we ignore his illegal possession?

 

[say1988]

Of course you can commit multiple crimes with one action. If a person runs someone over and kills them while drunk and doesn't stop he committed at least 3 crimes (drunk driving, vehicular homicide, and leaving the scene of an accident), morally or legally makes no difference, they are different crimes committed at the same time but all are separate and not integral to each other.

Other cases can be one crime with multiple elements (if you threaten someones life to get them to give you the money the threat was an integral element to the theft).

Of course there is a lot of grey area, but legally there is no distinction.