criminal law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It proscribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and Well-being, welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal l ...

, guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. Legal guilt is entirely externally defined by the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

, or more generally a "court of law". Being factually guilty of a

criminal offense In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane ...

means that one has committed a violation of

or performed all the elements of the offense set out by a criminal

statute A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wil ...

. The determination that one has committed that violation is made by an external body (a "court of law") after the determination of the facts by a

finder of fact In law, a trier of fact or finder of fact is a person or group who determines disputed issues of fact in a legal proceeding (usually a trial) and how relevant they are to deciding its outcome. To determine a fact is to decide, from the evidence ...

or "factfinder" (i.e., a

jury A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence, make Question of fact, findings of fact, and render an impartiality, impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a sentence (law), penalty or Judgmen ...

) and is, therefore, as definitive as the record-keeping of the body. For instance, in the case of a

bench trial A bench trial is a trial by judge, as opposed to a jury. The term applies most appropriately to any administrative hearing in relation to a summary offense to distinguish the type of trial. Many legal systems ( Roman, Islamic) use bench trials ...

, a judge acts as both the court of law and the factfinder, whereas in a

jury trial A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are increasingly used ...

, the jury is the

trier of fact In law, a trier of fact or finder of fact is a person or group who determines disputed issues of fact in a legal proceeding (usually a trial) and how relevant they are to deciding its outcome. To determine a fact is to decide, from the evide ...

and the judge acts only as the trier of law.

Factual guilt vs. legal guilt

In the United States, there exists factual guilt and legal guilt. Factual guilt relates to a person having factually committed a crime. This implies that the person fulfilled the requirements necessary for the offense to have occurred, such as the elements of the crime and their constitutive philosophical framework. However, it is not possible to prove that someone has factually committed a crime. Relative to this inability to conclusively prove factual guilt, the

Münchhausen trilemma In epistemology, the Münchhausen trilemma is a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the theoretical impossibility of proving any truth, even in the fields of logic and mathematics, without appealing to accepted assumptions. If it is asked ...

exemplifies that it is impossible to prove any truth. As it is impossible to prove factual guilt, a prosecutor must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant has committed a crime. As such, the prosecutor is required to prove the defendant's legal guilt. The factfinder(s) in a criminal court case, through encountering evidence, determines whether there is sufficient evidence to substantiate a finding that the defendant committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. This may or may not be a reasonable finding, however. Thus, although a defendant may be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (thus, found legally guilty) of having committed a crime, such as to substantiate a conviction, such a finding does not necessarily imply that the defendant was factually found legally guilty. Related to this matter are convictions in criminal cases that are overturned by new evidence (such as in DNA exoneration cases), such that the finding of legal guilt is found by a different factfinder to have been unreasonable; thus, legal guilt is found to have not been factually found or substantiated: This new finding itself, however, is not necessarily factual either.

Attribution of guilt as a social function

Philosophically, guilt in criminal law reflects a functioning society and its ability to condemn individuals' actions. It rests fundamentally on a presumption of

free will Free will is generally understood as the capacity or ability of people to (a) choice, choose between different possible courses of Action (philosophy), action, (b) exercise control over their actions in a way that is necessary for moral respon ...

, such as from a compatibilist perspective (as in the U.S.A.), in which individuals choose actions and are, therefore, subjected to the external judgement of the rightness or wrongness of those actions. As described by Judge Alvin B. Rubin in ''United States v. Lyons'' (1984):

Moral and legal definitions

"Guilt" is the obligation of a person who has violated a moral standard to bear the sanctions imposed by that moral standard. In legal terms, guilt means having been found to have violated a criminal law, though the law also raises 'the issue of defences, pleas, the mitigation of offences, and the defeasibility of claims'.

Les Parrott Les Parrott is an American author of Christian self-help books, a professor of psychology at Northwest University, and an ordained Nazarene minister. He is the creator of the SYMBIS Assessment, and founder of the Parrott Institute for Healthy ...

draws a three-fold distinction between "''objective'' or ''legal'' guilt, which occurs when society's laws have been broken... ''social'' guilt...

ver Ver or VER may refer to: * Voluntary Export Restraints, in international trade * VER, the IATA airport code for Veracruz International Airport * Volk's Electric Railway, Brighton, England * VerPublishing, of the German group VDM Publishing, re ...

an unwritten law of social expectation", and finally the way "''personal'' guilt occurs when someone compromises one's own standards".

Remedies

Guilt can sometimes be remedied by:

punishment Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a deterrent to a particular action or beh ...

(a common action and advised or required in many

legal Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a Socia ...

and moral codes);

forgiveness Forgiveness, in a psychology, psychological sense, is the intentional and voluntary process by which one who may have felt initially wronged, victimized, harmed, or hurt goes through a process of changing feelings and attitude regarding a given ...

(as in

transformative justice Transformative justice is a spectrum of social, economic, legal, and political practices and philosophies that aim to focus on the structures and underlying conditions that perpetuate harm and injustice. Taking up and expanding on the goals of rest ...

); making amends (see reparation or

acts of reparation Reparation is a Christian theological concept closely connected with those of atonement and satisfaction. In ascetical theology, reparation is the making of amends for insults given to God through sin, either one's own or another's. The response ...

), or "restitution ... an important step in finding freedom from real guilt'; or by sincere

remorse Remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past which they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or wrong. Remorse is closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment. When a perso ...

(as with

confession A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of people – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information that ...

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

restorative justice Restorative justice is a community-based approach to justice that aims to repair the harm done to victims, offenders and communities. In doing so, restorative justice practitioners work to ensure that offenders take responsibility for their ac ...

). Guilt can also be remedied through

intellectualisation In psychology, intellectualization (intellectualisation) is a defense mechanism by which reasoning is used to block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated emotional stress – where thinking is used to avoid feeling. It invo ...

or cognition (the understanding that the source of the guilty feelings was illogical or irrelevant). Helping other people can also help relieve guilt feelings: "Thus guilty people are often helpful people ... helping, like receiving an external reward, seemed to get people feeling better". There are also the so-called "

Don Juan Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni ( Italian), is a legendary fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. The original version of the story of Don Juan appears in the 1630 play (''The Trickster of Seville and t ...

s of achievement ... who pay the installments due their superego not by suffering but by achievements.... Since no achievement succeeds in really undoing the unconscious guilt, these persons are compelled to run from one achievement to another".Fenichel, p. 502 Law does not usually accept the agent's

self-punishment Self-harm refers to intentional behaviors that cause harm to oneself. This is most commonly regarded as direct injury of one's own skin tissue (biology), tissues, usually without suicidal intention. Other terms such as cutting, self-abuse, se ...

, but some ancient codes did: in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

, the accused could propose a remedy, which could be a reward, while the accuser proposed another, and the

chose something in-between. This forced the accused to effectively bet on his support in the community, as

Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...

did when he proposed "room and board in the town hall" as his fate. He lost and drank hemlock, a

poison A poison is any chemical substance that is harmful or lethal to living organisms. The term is used in a wide range of scientific fields and industries, where it is often specifically defined. It may also be applied colloquially or figurati ...

, as advised by his accuser.

References

External links