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People V. Young Case

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In People v. Young (1962), Young was convicted of assault in the third degree for assaulting two undercover officers. This is because he thought he was coming to defense of a “innocent”, African American, 18 year old who was being beat. For someone to be guilty of third degree murder “the defendant has to voluntarily intend to commit the unlawful act of touching” (People v. Young, p. 1). It is true that by definition Young is guilty of a crime. However, based off of the circumstances and his intentions, I do not believe he should have been charged or found guilty for any crime.
Some officers have a duty to go undercover and their protection should always be noticed by the court, however, Young's actions were not done in malice or done to harm …show more content…

378). Duff explains this by saying that a person must be held liable what they intended to do which is called the “intent principle”, however, a second principle must also be used to make judgements (p. 393). This principle is called the “belief principle”. The belief principle states that “we must judge [someone] on the basis of what they believed they were doing, not on the basis of actual facts and circumstances which were not known to them at the time” (Duff, p. 393). Therefore, Young should not be charged because he was unaware of the fact that the 18 year old was a criminal, that the people he perceived to be bad were the police, and that he was committing a crime. He simply believed that he was defending a helpless African American teenager who was being beaten. Therefore, he should not be charged with third degree assault, a FELONY, for something that he would have never done if he knew otherwise. Therefore, we should follow Froessal’s statement that “criminal intent requires an awareness of wrongdoing. When conduct is based upon mistake of fact…there can be no such awareness and, therefore, no criminal culpability” (p.

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