Legal Impossibility
An act that is considered legally impossible to commit is traditionally considered a valid defense for a person who was being prosecuted for a criminal attempt. An attempt is considered to be a "legal" impossibility when the defendant has completed all of his intended acts, but his acts fail to fulfill all the required in elements of a crime in common law. Mistakes of law have proved a successful defense. An example of a failed attempt of law is a person who shoots at a tree stump, believing that he is committing attempted murder; that person cannot be prosecuted for attempted murder as there is no manifest intent to kill by shooting a stump. The underlying rationale is that attempting to do what is not a crime is not attempting to commit a crime.
However, "legal" and "factual" mistakes are not mutually exclusive. A borderline case is that of a person who shot a stuffed deer, thinking it was alive as was the case in State v. Guffey, (1953) in which a person was originally convicted for attempting to kill a protected animal out of season. In a debatable reversal, an appellate judge threw out the conviction on the basis that it is no crime to shoot a stuffed deer out of season.
Read more about this topic: Impossibility Defense
Famous quotes containing the word legal:
“... whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining absolute power over wives. But you must remember that Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken—and notwithstanding all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet ...”
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818)