An Impossibility defense is a criminal defense occasionally used when a defendant is accused of a criminal attempt that failed only because the crime was factually or legally impossible to commit. Factual impossibility is rarely an adequate defense at common law. In the United States, thirty-seven states have ruled out factual impossibility as a defense to the crime of attempt. This is not to be confused with a 'mistake' of fact defense, which is always considered as a defense to criminal charges.
Read more about Impossibility Defense: Factual Impossibility, Legal Impossibility
Famous quotes containing the word defense:
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)