Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Sentencing Council of England and Wales lists the following as possible mitigating factors: [2] Admitting the offense, such as through a guilty plea; Mental illness; Provocation; Young age; Showing remorse; Self-defense is a legal defense rather than a mitigating factor, as an act done in justified self-defense is not deemed to be a crime ...
Aggravated assault, for example, is usually differentiated from simple assault by the offender's intent (e.g., to murder or to rape), the extent of injury to the victim, or the use of a deadly weapon. An aggravating circumstance is a kind of attendant circumstance and the opposite of an extenuating or mitigating circumstance, which decreases guilt.
The DSL required judges to impose the middle term unless aggravating factors were found to exist, and those aggravating factors by definition did not include any element of the crime. Thus, the maximum sentence the judge could impose based solely on the jury's findings was the middle term, not the high term. Nevertheless, in People v.
Aggravating factors must be found by a jury. [17] Aggravating factors cannot be vague. [18] The sentencing decision-maker must have the authority to consider all mitigating factors. [19] Fourth, the Clause requires certain additional procedural rules in capital cases. For example, the jury must be permitted to consider a lesser included offense ...
This involves assessing the aggravating and mitigating features of the offence. Courts can take into account any fact considered relevant as aggravating or mitigating, [10] and many are set out in sentencing guidelines. The Sentencing Act sets out a number of statutory aggravating factors including:
The Kansas capital punishment statute allowed for the imposition of the death penalty if the mitigating and aggravating factors were of equal weight, so Marsh was sentenced to death. [ 2 ] After Marsh's sentencing, the Kansas Supreme Court in State v Kleypas, declared the law unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment and overturned it. [ 3 ]
The attitude of a legal system to intoxicating substances can affect the applicability of intoxication as a defense under its laws: a system strongly opposed to a substance may even view intoxication as an aggravating factor rather than a mitigating one. [1] The effect of intoxication on criminal responsibility varies by jurisdiction and offense.
The Enmund/Tison finding is not a substantive limit on the definition of a crime, and neither were aggravating factors. Accordingly, the Sixth Amendment did not require a jury to pass on aggravating factors. Justice Scalia concurred in this part of the holding in Walton. It would be another eight years before he would first express his view ...