Can one action be two crimes?

[Hygro]

Here's a few hypotheticals:

edit: I mean this philosophically/morally, (not what legally happens today)

1)
Let's say it's illegal to kill someone, and let's say it's illegal to fire guns at people, whether it has blanks or real bullets. Now let's say I kill someone by firing my gun at them.

Did I just commit two crimes, or did I commit one?


2)
Let's say it's illegal to burn cloth due to a pollution ordinance. Let's say it's illegal to burn flag's because it is vandalism against the spirit of the nation. You just burned a cloth flag.

Did you commit two crimes, or just one?


3)
How about it's illegal to paint your house an unapproved color (like red) due to a city ordinance. Now let's say it is also illegal to have displays of naziism in public. So you paint a red swastika on your front door.

Two crimes?

4)
Back to murder: killing is illegal. So is drunk driving. You get accidentally killed by a drunk driver because he was drunk and didn't react properly to your crossing the street. Does your killer face only murder charges, drunk driving charges, or both?

 

[Narz]

People get convicted of multiple crimes all the time. You can even get multiple moving violations for the same action. You don't really need to ask CFC about this.

 

[Zelig]

Are you asking morally, or legally?

Because legally, the answer is pretty straight-forward.

 

[Hygro]

People get convicted of multiple crimes all the time. You can even get multiple moving violations for the same action. You don't really need to ask CFC about this.

Are you asking morally, or legally?

Because legally, the answer is pretty straight-forward.

morally. why would I post a thread if the question was legally?

 

[Earthling]

um, yes to both

 

[W|M]

In the Middle Ages, it was even possible to commit three crimes with just one action.

 

[woody60707]

Dude, you can commit multipliable crimes by taking no actions. One action just seems to be asking for it really.

 

[Evie]

Morally, it's a single crime, that is, a single criminal action. You didn't do two things, you did one that, taken as a whole, is "the crime".

Legally, of course, the law is concerned with making sure you don't break the law, not making sure you take the right action. Thus you get charged on the basis of the number of laws you break and the number of times you break them, not the number of criminal actions you carried out.

 

[Elrohir]

Intuitively, it seems like singular actions can often result in multiple results, and can be characterized in multiple ways. (I ate pie, I cleared the plate, I finished up the leftovers, I made a pig of myself, I stole my brother's food, I consumed over 9,000 calories, I filled my stomach -- I could say all these things of a single, hypothetical action.) This intuition is reflected in the law today, as a single action can result in multiple charges. You say you're interested in the moral aspect of it, not the legal, but don't provide any justification for believing that they should be different.

Why can't an action be two crimes? It seems reasonable, and it seems to work. Can you provide a coherent argument for why they should not be? It's perfectly reasonable to challenge the status quo, but a serious challenge consists of more than just a question. If you want a real discussion you should come up with an argument to make us genuinely interested in the issue.

 

[Hygro]

Are you talking to me or to Oda?

 

[Elrohir]

You -- it's your thread.

 

[Hygro]

Can you provide a coherent argument for why they should not be?

Actually I posted this thread curious to see if anyone could. It has some important implications either way.

Oda touched on it, but didn't get too deep in it.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Here's a few hypotheticals:

edit: I mean this philosophically/morally, (not what legally happens today)

1)
Let's say it's illegal to kill someone, and let's say it's illegal to fire guns at people, whether it has blanks or real bullets. Now let's say I kill someone by firing my gun at them.

Did I just commit two crimes, or did I commit one?


2)
Let's say it's illegal to burn cloth due to a pollution ordinance. Let's say it's illegal to burn flag's because it is vandalism against the spirit of the nation. You just burned a cloth flag.

Did you commit two crimes, or just one?


3)
How about it's illegal to paint your house an unapproved color (like red) due to a city ordinance. Now let's say it is also illegal to have displays of naziism in public. So you paint a red swastika on your front door.

Two crimes?

4)
Back to murder: killing is illegal. So is drunk driving. You get accidentally killed by a drunk driver because he was drunk and didn't react properly to your crossing the street. Does your killer face only murder charges, drunk driving charges, or both?

First of all, in cases 2 and 3, BOTH laws in question are pretty dumb (OK, fine, banning Swaistikas is a standard hate speech law, but its still dumb) so I wouldn't charge the person with ANY crimes, and would vote non-guilty in Jury anyway.

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.

Fourth crime sounds like manslaughter, not murder, but he should still get his license permanently taken away.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think you can have mens rea for multiple crimes while committing one action.
I intend to illegally burn cloth. I intend to desecrate a national symbol.

 

[Narz]

Actually I posted this thread curious to see if anyone could. It has some important implications either way.

Oda touched on it, but didn't get too deep in it.

Want to enlighten us as to what important implications we're missing?

 

[Ayatollah So]

This intuition is reflected in the law today, as a single action can result in multiple charges. You say you're interested in the moral aspect of it, not the legal, but don't provide any justification for believing that they should be different.

Why can't an action be two crimes? It seems reasonable, and it seems to work.

This. One actions can have multiple effects on multiple people and so merit multiple restorations and/or punishments.

 

[Mise]

Are you talking about the difference between consequentialism and deontology?

 

[onedreamer]

The number of moral crimes in an action is counted the same way the number of legal crimes, since moral has a list of what is not a moral action just like law has a list of what is not a legal action.
The difference is rather in the penalty. Law would put them together mathematically most of the times, while Moral would work differently, I suppose by inflicting the higher penalty.

 

[MobBoss]

You can have a criminal action meet the criteria for additional charges and specifications. Thus to coin an old term 'throw the book at 'em'...which refers to the old practice of charging someone with every potential violation they may have committed in what they did.

Often in a trial, multiple charges will be argued all at once, and often a jury will return different verdicts for different charges depending on how they interpret the evidence.

 

[Brighteye]

Of course it can. In all your examples, if you find a way to commit one sin that also breaks other moral rules, then your action is doubly wrong.
We then transfer that directly to law, at which point 'sin' becomes crime, and 'doubly wrong' becomes 'liable for both punishments'.