Criminal Justice

Defining the Elements of a Case
Introduction
For every civil tort, criminal statutory violation, contract issue, or other cause of action, there are elements. All of the elements need to be proved in order for the person bringing the cause of action to prevail. The person against whom the cause of action is brought need only disprove one of the elements to win. Therefore it is very important to determine what the elements of a cause of action are.
State v. Caudillo
Let us look at a particular crime and define its elements. In this case, the crime is false imprisonment. In State of Arizona, Appellee, v. Antonio Gomez Caudillo, Appellant, 124 Ariz. 410; 604 P.2d 1121; 1979 Ariz. LEXIS 374 (Sup. Ct AZ, 1979), the court was presented with the issue of determining whether the crime of false imprisonment was a lesser included offense of kidnapping. To do so, the court had to look at the elements of kidnapping, and then look at the elements of false imprisonment. Essentially, the issue was whether all the elements of false imprisonment were encompassed in at least part of the elements of kidnapping.
Go to LexisNexis and look up the Caudillo case. The court states that Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 13-961 provides that: a) False imprisonment is the unlawful violation of the personal liberty of another; and b) If the false imprisonment is effected by violence, menace, fraud or deceit, it is punishable by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 10 years. The elements for simple false imprisonment are in Section A and are (1) unlawful violation (2) of the personal liberty of another. The additional elements in Section B need to be proven only if the prosecutor wishes to raise the violation to a greater sentence.
The court also cited Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 13-491, which reads in part that a person is guilty of a felony who: 1. Forcibly steals, takes or arrests any person in the state, and carries him into another country, state or county, or into another part of the same county; 2. Forcibly takes any person, with a design to take him from the state; 3. Hires, persuades, entices, decoys or seduces by false promises, misrepresentations or similar methods any person to go from the state, for the purpose and with the intent to sell such person into slavery or otherwise employ him for his own use, or to the use of another. A person who, being without this state, abducts or takes by force or fraud any person and brings, sends or conveys such person within the state, is guilty of kidnapping.
Read the Caudillo case. Note that the court makes a chart showing the elements of each crime. It is clear from this analysis of the elements that false imprisonment is a lesser included offense of kidnapping.
Background Research
What if you know nothing about a particular crime such that you cannot even begin to search? You can also use LexisNexis to find a general topic and then narrow it by compiling a list of all of the possible variations that you can think of under the topic. To help find the variations, you can start by looking at a legal encyclopedia. For example, with regard to using reasonable suspicion to make an arrest through racial profiling, assume that you know nothing about the topic. Examining the topic in a legal encyclopedia can lead you in the correct direction.
To do so, within LexisNexis, on the left side of the Web site in the GCU eLibrary, find the topic “US Legal.” From the dropdown menu, select “Legal Reference” to see a list of various legal reference books. A terrific legal encyclopedia is American Jurisprudence 2nd. Go to it and type in “racial profiling.” The search will not find anything. This is because “racial profiling” is not one of the encyclopedia’s topics. Each research source will have its own list of topics. You need to start with a more general topic such as arrest. Type in “arrest.” Notice that the topic produces over 2,000 entries. Now you need to narrow down your search. In the second line of the search, type in “reasonable suspicion,” there are now about 100 items further broken down by sources. For example, the two terms are found multiple times under the heading Aliens and Citizens. While you could narrow down your search further to include “racial profiling,” it is wise to review the various sections to see if any of the summaries might make you think of other possibilities that you might research. For example, while § 1867 is about reasonable suspicion, you might also look at § 73 and § 89 to see if the location of the stop makes any difference. Please read all of sections 73, 89, and 1867. Note that the lower numbered sections are more general, while the higher numbered sections are more specific.
Law Review Articles
Other good secondary sources include Law Review articles. These are articles written either by a law professor or by a selected law student under the review of a peer-review group. The article tries to focus on a particular issue and carry it to an in-depth analysis. Again, go to “US Legal” on the left side of LexisNexis main research page. Click “Law Reviews.” Here, you can search more than one term. Try “reasonable suspicion” on the top line, and “racial profiling” on the middle line. Because you have an Arizona fact situation, add “Arizona” to the third line. Click “Criminal Law” and hit “Search.” Because you want to sort by relevance to our topic, also click “Relevance” from the “Sort” dropdown box at the top-left corner of the search results page. If you have followed the steps correctly, you will find an article by the Arizona Board of Regents in the Arizona Law Review written in 2007 and entitled “Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement: State and Local Agreements to Enforce Federal Immigration Law.” Please read the article.

 
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