Instructions:
Read the following criminal law fact pattern and then respond to the prompt below. You are encouraged to make a concise outline BEFORE you start writing so that you can frame your answer clearly and concisely within the 800 word limit.
This prompt is designed so that a thoughtful and well-prepared student should be able to complete it within roughly two class periods
The L.R.R. Hood Case: A Tragedy of Fur & Fury
*(NOT a true story – In this case, not a single actual living creature has been harmed in any way)
Once upon a time there was a sweet 6-year old child who was loved by everyone who ever set eyes on her, but she was loved most of all by her dear grandmother. Granny sewed the girl a riding hood of bright red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. Henceforth she was always known in the Woods as ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ One day her mother said to her: “Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a lovely sweet cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother. Granny is old and frail, and the sugar and the alcohol will do her some good.” Granny lived in a cabin in the dark forest, half a league from the village.
However, in the forest there also dwelt two wolves named Lupine and Vulpine. These two wolves had experienced a terrible winter. They were famished, and were nearly at the point of death. These two wolves had searched the forest in vain for any morsels to eat.
Upon seeing Little Red Riding Hood walking through the forest toward Granny’s house, Lupine’s eyes lit up and he exclaimed to Vulpine “I see dinner. Let’s eat!” Vulpine looked back at him and grinned and nodded in enthusiastic agreement. Then Lupine set off after Little Red Riding Hood and Vulpine followed close behind him.
Upon reaching Little Red Riding Hood, Lupine spoke: “We are starving and we have come to devour you.” Hearing this, Little Red Riding Hood was quite reasonably terrified. So she replied, “Please do not eat me, Mr. Wolf. I am on my way to see my sick
grandmother, and what’s more, the Woodsman, who is the Sheriff’s deputy, is on the road just behind me, and if he catches you he will surely kill you with his very large axe. You may take my basket of food if you will let me go forth unhurt.” Lupine considered this, then he took the food and fled into the dark woods. Vulpine followed his lead.
The two starving wolves consumed all of the cake and all of the sweet intoxicating wine. However, they were ignorant of the serious cognitive effects of consuming processed, high-sugar human sweets and alcoholic drinks. So, before they knew it, the two wolves were overcome by the effects of the wine and of the sweetened cake. Still quite hungry, but now also intoxicated, they stumbled along until they came upon Granny’s cabin. Then Lupine, peering into the windows and seeing no one about, decided to enter the house in search of more food. He asked Vulpine to stand watch outside, and Vulpine agreed to do so. But in fact the inebriated Vulpine curled up in the bushes and promptly fell sound asleep.
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Lupine entered the house, where he saw Granny lying in bed. Without saying a word, he went straight to the grandmother and devoured her in one huge bite. Then he dressed himself in Granny’s night-clothes, including her frilly night cap, he laid himself in her bed and drew all the curtains. Shortly thereafter Little Red Riding Hood arrived at the cabin. Without noticing the snoozing Vulpine behind the bushes by the door, she entered Granny’s house.
There in the dark room Little Red Riding Hood thought she saw her grandmother snoring in bed with her fuzzy knit cap pulled far down over her face, but looking rather strange indeed.
‘Oh! Granny,’ she said, ‘what big ears you have!’
‘All the better to hear you with, my child,’ was the reply.
‘But, Granny, what big eyes you have!’ she said. ‘All the better to see you with, my dear.’
‘But, Granny, what large hands you have!’
‘All the better to hug you with.’
‘Oh! But Granny, what a terrible big mouth you have!’ ‘All the better to eat you with!’
And scarcely had Lupine uttered these words than with a single bound he was out of bed and he had entirely swallowed up Little Red Riding Hood. When the wolf had satisfied his appetite, he lay down again in the bed to sleep it off, and he began to snore even more loudly.
Just then the Woodsman was passing by the cabin; he saw its door ajar and heard a rumbling noise – so he thought to himself: ‘How loudly that old woman is snoring! I should check to see if she needs any assistance.’ He went into the hut, and when he approached the bed, he saw that the wolf was sleeping there. Lupine awoke and, seeing the Woodsman, he sprang for the door to flee. The Woodsman cried out, “Stop Wolf, in the name of the Law!”
The Woodsman swung his sharp axe, making a very large cut across the wolf’s stomach.
To the Woodsman’s joyful surprise, he saw Little Red Riding Hood’s bright red velvet hood emerging from the cut in Lupine’s abdomen as she leapt out, frightened but alive and then hugging him. She cried: ‘Oh, how frightened I have been! Oh, how dark
it was inside that wolf.’ Unfortunately, the Woodsman’s axe had also struck Granny’s head when it cut into the wolf’s stomach, and Granny was now dead.
Upon seeing her grandmother’s corpse, Little Red Riding Hood quickly fetched large stones with which she filled the Lupine’s belly, crying ‘this is what you get, you bad, bad wolf!’
At that moment the Sheriff of the Forrest arrived. He found Vulpine still asleep in the bushes. He took Vulpine into custody – Vulpine was still quite intoxicated but otherwise uninjured. Lupine was still inside the cabin, but drawing his dying breaths due to the effects of the Woodsman’s axe cut and of Little Red Riding Hood’s stones in his belly. An ambulance was called, but Lupine died of his axe-cut injury on the way to the hospital despite the best efforts of the EMT personnel.
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Your Assignment:
You are a newly-hired junior associate attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor for the District of the Forest. Your boss has just received the Sherriff’s report summarized above. Your boss has asked you to prepare an analysis of the events that had taken place in the Forest at Granny’s house and nearby.
Specifically, she would like you to prepare a memo of no more than 800 words addressing the following questions:
Which (living) parties may be charged with crimes? (Consider: Vulpine . . . possible inchoate crimes and crimes of complicity? — can the Woodsman as “Deputy Sherriff of the Forest” be charged in the death of either Granny or Lupine? Why or why not? Could anybody else possibly be charged?)
For any party you might charge with a crime, specify what crime(s) may have been committed? State the
elements of the crime and apply them to the facts as stated above.
For each party who might be charged, what are the best affirmative defenses—if any—that might be put
forward on that defendant’s behalf? Again, make sure to state the elements of the defense and apply the elements to the facts as stated above.
Assume that the Criminal law of the District of the Forest treats wolves the same as competent adult humans. Where you think you need some further fact to make your analysis, say what the fact is and say why. You should apply the law as generally laid out in our Lippman textbook. Wherever the facts of this case raise a question where the legal doctrines seem perhaps conflicting or unclear to you, you are welcome to state that in your response as well. That suggests that you are probably on the right track for a good answer! In any law school exam, this is precisely where you state, for example. “the Model Penal Code recommends X. – but a majority of states have held that Y.” (think here of the MPC “duty to retreat” versus the current majority of states’ “stand your ground” rule – or many other similarly controversial doctrines). A good law student should know to spot both sides of the question, even briefly.
Just do your best to identify all plausible crimes and defenses.
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