CRW 1501 ASSIGNMENT 1

QUESTION ONE No, the charge does not meet the requirements of the principle of legality as not behaving properly in public is not clear. Crimes have to be defined in clear and precise language. Crimes cannot be defined vaguely. There must also be a penalty attached to the crime. QUESTION TWO The act must be a human act; in other words, the perpetrator of the act must be a human being. In ancient societies and during the Middle Ages, animals and even inanimate objects, such as beams that fell on people’s heads, were sometimes “tried” and “punished”, but this cannot happen today in the South African (or any other modern) legal system. A human being can, however, be punished if he commits a crime through the agency of an animal, for example where he urges his dog to bite someone (Eustace 1948 (3) SA 859 (T); Fernandez 1966 (2) SA 259 (A)). Page 2 of 3 This study source was downloaded by from CourseH on :11:44 GMT -05:00 This study resource was shared via CourseH QUESTION THREE This expression means “new intervening event” and is used to indicate that between X’s initial act and the ultimate death of Y, another event has taken place which has broken the chain of causation, preventing us from regarding X’s act as the cause of Y’s death. For example, X administers a poison to Y that will slowly kill her. Shortly thereafter, Z, who also bears a grudge a