Crime and Criminal
KJV References
Zimmâ, Hebrew Strong's #2154, is used 29 times in the Old Testament. It is translated as lewdness (14), wickedness (4), mischief (3), lewd (2), heinous crime (1), wicked devices (1), lewdly (1), wicked mind (1), purposes (1), thought (1). It is translated as “heinous crime” in the following verse:
Job 31:11 - For this is an heinous crime; yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges.
Mishpāṭ, Hebrew Strong's #4941, is used 421 times in the Old Testament. It is translated as judgment (296), manner (38), right (18), cause (12), ordinance (11), lawful (7), order (5), worthy (3), fashion (3), custom (2), discretion (2), law (2), measure (2), sentence (2), miscellaneous translations (18). It is translated as “crimes” in the following verse:
Ezekiel 7:23 - Make a chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.
Enklēma, Greek Strong's #1462, is used 2 times in the New Testament. It is translated as laid to (one's) charge (1) and crime laid against (one) in the following verse:
Acts 25:16 - To whom I answered, It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have licence to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him.
Aitia, Greek Strong's #156, is used 20 times in the New Testament. It is translated as cause (9), wherefore + <G1223> + <G3739> (3), accusation (3), fault (3), case (1), crime (1). It is translated as “crime” in the following verse:
Acts 25:27 - For it seemeth to me unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crimes laid against him.
Notice the "oldspeak" vs. the "newspeak."
Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, 1828
CRIME, noun [Latin , Gr. , to separate, to judge, to decree, to condemn.]
1. An act which violates a law, divine or human; an act which violates a rule of moral duty; an offense against the laws of right, prescribed by God or man, or against any rule of duty plainly implied in those laws. A crime may consist in omission or neglect, as well as in commission, or positive transgression. The commander of a fortress who suffers the enemy to take possession by neglect, is as really criminal, as one who voluntarily opens the gates without resistance.
But in a more common and restricted sense, a crime denotes an offense, or violation of public law, of a deeper and more atrocious nature; a public wrong; or a violation of the commands of God, and the offenses against the laws made to preserve the public rights; as treason, murder, robbery, theft, arson, etc. The minor wrongs committed against individuals or private rights, are denominated trespasses, and the minor wrongs against public rights are called misdemeanors. Crimes and misdemeanors are punishable by indictment, information or public prosecution; trespasses or private injuries, at the suit of the individuals injured. But in many cases an act is considered both as a public offense and a trespass, and is punishable both by the public and the individual injured.
2. Any great wickedness; iniquity; wrong.
No crime was thing, if tis no crime to love.
Capital crime a crime punishable with death.
CRIMINAL, adjective
1. Guilty of a crime; applied to persons.
2. Partaking of a crime; involving a crime; that violates public law, divine or human; as, theft is a criminal act.
3. That violates moral obligation; wicked.
4. Relating to crimes; opposed to civil; as a criminal code; criminal law.
CRIMINAL, noun A person who has committed an offense against public law; a violator of law, divine or human. More particularly, a person indicted or charged with a public offense, and one who is found guilty, by verdict, confession or proof.
CRIMINAL conversation, the illegal commerce of the sexes; adultery.
Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, 1856
CRIME.
1. A crime is an offence against a public law. This word, in its most general signification, comprehends all offences but, in its limited sense, it is confined to felony. 1 Chitty, Gen. Pr. 14.
2. The term misdemeanor includes every offence inferior to felony, but punishable by indictment or by particular prescribed proceedings.
3. The term offence, also, may be considered as, having the same meaning, but is usually, by itself, understood to be a crime not indictable but punishable, summarily, or by the forfeiture of, a penalty. Burn's Just. Misdemeanor.
4. Crimes are defined and punished by statutes and by the common law. Most common law offences are as well known, and as precisely ascertained, as those which are defined by statutes; yet, from the difficulty of exactly defining and describing every act which ought to be punished, the vital and preserving principle has been adopted, that all immoral acts which tend to the prejudice of the community are punishable by courts of justice. 2 Swift's Dig.
5. Crimes are mala in se, or bad in themselves; and these include all offences against the moral law; or they are mala prohibita, bad because prohibited, as being against sound policy; which, unless prohibited, would be innocent or indifferent. Crimes may be classed into such as affect:
6. 1. Religion and public worship: viz. blasphemy, disturbing public worship.
7. 2. The sovereign power: treason, misprision of treason.
8. 3. The current coin: as counterfeiting or impairing it.
9. 4. Public justice: 1. Bribery of judges or jurors, or receiving the bribe. 2. Perjury. 3. Prison breaking. 4. Rescue. 5. Barratry. 6. Maintenance. 7. Champerty. 8. Compounding felonies. 9. Misprision of felonies. 10. 6ppression. 11. Extortion. 12. Suppressing evidence. 13. Negligence or misconduct in inferior officers. 14. Obstructing legal process. 15. Embracery.
10. 5. Public peace. 1. Challenges to fight a duel. 2. Riots, routs and unlawful assemblies. 3. Affrays. 4. Libels.
11. 6. Public trade. 1. Cheats. 2. Forestalling. S. Regrating. 4. Engross ing. 5. Monopolies.
12. 7. Chastity. 1. Sodomy. 2. Adultery. 3. Incest. 4. Bigamy. 5. Fornication.
13. 8. Decency and morality. 1. Public indecency. 2. Drunkenness. 3. Violating the grave.
14. 9. Public police and economy. 1. Common nuisances. 2. Keeping disorderly houses and bawdy houses. 3. Idleness, vagrancy, and beggary.
15. 10. Public. policy. 1. Gambling. 2. Illegal lotteries.
16. 11. Individuals. 1. Homicide, which is justifiable, excusable or felonious. 2. Mayhem. 3. Rape. 4. Poisoning, with intent to murder. 5. Administering drugs to a woman quick with child to cause, miscarriage. 6. Concealing death of bastard child. 7. Assault and battery, which is either simple or with intent to commit some other crime. 8. kidnapping. 9. False imprisonment. 10. Abduction.
17. 12. Private property. 1. Burglary. 2. Arson. 3. Robbery. 4., Forgery. 5. Counterfeiting. 6. Larceny. 7. Receiving stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen, or theft bote. 8. Malicious mischief.
18. 13. The public, individuals, or their property, according to the intent of the criminal. 1. Conspiracy.
CRIME AGAINST NATURE. Sodomy. It is a crime not fit to be named; peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum. 4 Bl. Com. 214. See Sodomy.
CRIMEN FALSI, civil law, crime.
1. It is a fraudulent alteration, or forgery, to conceal or alter the truth, to the prejudice of another. This crime may, be committed in three ways, namely: 1. By forgery. 2. By false declarations or false oath, perjury. 3. By acts; as, by dealing with false weights and measures, by altering the current coin, by making false keys, and the like. Vide Dig. 48, 10, 22; Dig. 34, 8 2; Code, lib. 9, t. 22, 1. 2, 5, 9. 11, 16, 17, 23, and 24; Merl. Rep. h. t.; 1 Bro. Civ. Law, 426; 1 Phil. Ev. 26; 2 Stark. Ev. 715.
2. What is understood by this, term in the common law, is not very clearly defined. Peake's Ev. 133; 1 Phil. Ev. 24; 2 Stark. Ev. 715. It extends to forgery, perjury, subornation of perjury, suppression of testimony by bribery, and conspiracy to convict of perjury. See 12 Mod. 209; 2 S. & R. 552; 1 Greenl. Ev. §373; and article Faux.
CRIMINAL.
Relating to, or having the character of crime; as, criminal law, criminal conversation, &c. It also signifies a person convicted of a crime.
CRIMINAL CONVERSATION, crim. law.
1. This phrase is usually employed to denote the crime of adultery. It is abbreviated crim. con. Bac. Ab. Marriage, E 2; 4 Blackf. R. 157.
2. The remedy for criminal conversation is, by an action on the case for damages. That the plaintiff connived, or assented to, his wife's infidelity, or that he prostituted her for gain, is a complete answer to the action. See Connivance. But the facts that the wife's character for chastity was bad before the plaintiff married her; that he lived with her after he knew of the criminal intimacy with the defendant; that he had connived at her intimacy with other men;, or that the plaintiff had been false to his wife, only go in mitigation of damages. 4 N. Hamp. R. 501.
3. The wife cannot maintain an action for criminal conversation with her hushand; and for this, among other reasons, because her husband, who is particeps criminis, must be joined with her as plaintiff.
CRIMINALITER.
1. Criminally; opposed to civiliter, civilly.
2. When a person commits a wrong to the injury of another, he is answerable for it civiliter, whatever may have been his intent; but, unless his intent has been unlawful the is not answerable criminaliter. 1 East, 104.
TO CRIMINATE.
1. To accuse of a crime; to admit having committed a crime or misdemeanor.
2. It is a rule, that a witness cannot be compelled to answer any question which has a tendency to expose him to a penalty, or to any kind of punishment, or to a criminal charge. 3 Bouv. Inst. n. 3209 12; 4 St. Tr. 6; 10 How. St. Tr.@ 1096; 6 St. Tr. 649; 16 How. St. Tr. 1149; 2 DougI. R. 593; 2 Ld. Raym. 1088; 24 How. St. Tr. 720; 16 Ves. jr. 242; 2 Swanst. Ch. R. 216; 1 Cranch. R. 144; 2 Yerg. R. 110 5 Day, Rep. 260; I Carr., & Payne, 11 2 Nott & M'C. 13; 6 Cowen, Rep. 254; 2 Peak. N. P. C. 106; 1 John. R. 498; 12 S. & R. 284; 8 Wend. 598.
3. An accomplice, admitted to give evidence against his associates in guilt, is bound to make a full and fair confession of the whole truth respecting the subject matter of the prosecution; but he is not bound to answer with respect to his share in other offences, in which he was not concerned with the prisoner. 9 Cowen, R. 721, note (a); 2 Carr. & Payne, 411. Vide Disgrace,; Witness;
CRIMINATOIN.
1. The act by which a party accused, is proved to be guilty.
2. It is a rule, founded in common sense, that no one is bound to criminate himself. A witness may refuse to answer a question, when the answer would criminate him, and subject him to punishment. And a party in equity is not bound to answer a bill, when the answer would form a step in the prosecution. Coop. Eq. Pl. 204; Mitf. Eq. Pl. by Jeremy, 194; Story, Eq,. Pl. §591; 14 Ves. 59.
Maxims from Bouvier’s
An act does not make a person guilty, unless the intention be also guilty. This maxim applies only to criminal cases; in civil matters it is otherwise.
The estimation of a crime committed never increased from a subsequent fact.
It is the crime which causes the shame, and not the scaffold.
No one is punished for merely thinking of a crime.
Let the punishment be proportioned to the crime.
In criminal cases, the proofs ought to be clearer than the light.
In criminal cases a general intention is sufficient, when there is an act of equal or corresponding degree.
It concerns the commonwealth that crimes do not remain unpunished.
Mayhem is the least of great crimes, and the greatest of small.
It is a greater crime to kill one's self than another.
That justice which justly prevents a crime, is better than that which severely punishes it.
The increase of punishment should be in proportion to the increase of crime.
No one can be punished twice for the same crime or misdemeanor.
No one can improve his condition by a crime
No one is to be punished for the crime or wrong of another.
All crimes committed openly are considered lighter.
He adds one offence to another, who, when he commits a crime, joins to it the protection of a defence.
The instigator of a crime is worse than he who perpetrates it.
Punishment may have an end, crime is perpetual.
Let him who accuses be of a clear fame, and not criminal.
The hope of impunity holds out a continual temptation to crime.
Facility of pardon is an incentive to crime.
He who fails to protect another from clear and present danger when a word will prevent the crime, is guilty of the crime himself.
Crimes of the Civil War and Curse of the Funding System, Judge Henry Clay Dean, 1868
"The Reconstruction Bill is the most monstrous crime of the Christian era. It is a crime against Christianity in this--that it transfers the government of a Christian people to the control of a degraded, imbecile race of heathens, who yet retain the idolatry and superstitions of the most revolting systems of heathen worship."
Black’s Law Dictionary, 1st edition, 1891
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Black’s Law Dictionary, abridged 6th edition, 1991
Crime
A positive or negative act in violation of penal law; an offense against the State or United States.
Criminal
(n) One who has committed a criminal offense; one who has been legally convicted of a crime; one adjudged guilty of a crime.
(a) That which pertains to or is connected with the law of crimes, or the administration of penal justice, or which relates to or has the character of crime.
WEX Legal Dictionary
Crime
Behavior that the law makes punishable as a public offense. The elements of a crime typically come from statutes, but may also be supplied by the common law in states where the criminal common law still carries force.
Crime is behavior, either by act or omission, defined by statutory or common law as deserving of punishment. Although most crimes require the element of intent, certain minor crimes may be committed on the basis of strict liability even if the defendant had no specific mindset with regard to the criminal action. For instance, parking violations are crimes that usually do not require prosecutors to establish intent.
Some crimes are considered mala prohibita ("bad because prohibited"); these are prohibited by statute but are not inherently evil. Other crimes are considered mala in se ("bad in themselves"); these are considered inherently evil under general community standards. The idea of mala in se formed the original justification for common law crimes. However, many crimes that are today prohibited by statute also belong to the category of mala in se.
Crimes are prosecuted by government attorneys. Such attorneys may represent a city, county, state, or the federal government. Examples include the Attorney General of the United States, the attorney general of a state, federal district attorneys, and city attorneys.
Crimes are ranked as greater violations of public order (felony) or as lesser violations (misdemeanor), and are adjudicated according to rules of criminal procedure.
QUOTES:
There are hundreds of crime/criminal quotes found
HERE. I chose some of the more pointed:
Thomas Jefferson:
The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes [and] delegated to that government certain definite powers and whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. To this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution the measure of its powers.
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
Albert Jay Nock:
It can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.
[T]he State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation -- that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class -- that is, for a criminal purpose. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient.
Lysander Spooner:
For more than six hundred years -- that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215 -- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating or resisting the execution of such laws.
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. In vices, the very essence of crime—that is, the design to injure the person or property of another—is wanting. It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practices a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others. Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property, and the corresponding coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
Ayn Rand:
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system.
It is a policeman’s duty to protect men from criminals -- criminals being those who seize wealth by force. It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not the protection, but the plunder of property -- then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis:
To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retribution.
Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for the law.
Jessica Mitford:
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Clarence S. Darrow:
There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.
Max Stirner:
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.
Simone Weil:
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime – namely, repressive justice.
Alfred E. Newman:
Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
L. Neil Smith:
Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage.
Lord Vansittart:
The tragedy of the police state is that it always regards all opposition as a crime, and there are no degrees.
Emma Goldman:
The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.
Jeffrey R. Snyder:
Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.
Nathaniel Branden:
The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism ...
George Bernard Shaw:
Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.
James A. Bruton, III:
Every time we establish a new crime, we’re creating a new mechanism for the government to check up on you.
John Viscount Morley:
When it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
P. D. Ouspensky:
In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes.
Will Durst:
Criminal lawyer. Or is that redundant?
Edwin M. Schur:
[When a victimless criminal] is treated as an enemy of society, he almost necessarily becomes one. Forced into criminal acts, immersed in underworld-related supply networks, and ever-conscious of the need to evade the police, his outlooks as well as behavior become more and more anti-social.
Vinnie Moscaritolo:
If we can just pass a few more laws, we could all be criminals!
Mark Twain:
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
Howard Scott:
CRIMINAL: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.
Frederic Bastiat:
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim -- when he defends himself -- as a criminal.
Jeffrey R. Snyder:
If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?
William R. Tonso:
[T]hroughout history the unarmed have been safe only as long as the armed (criminals or government agents) have allowed them to be safe. We should beware of any politician, bureaucrat, or intellectual who claims the Second Amendment is outdated, or that it does no more than guarantee the National guard’s right to bear arms. Many of these same people did their best to obstruct investigations of government wrongdoing at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Richard M. Ebeling:
Government is, and always has been, the greatest criminal threat to the peaceful members of society.