Also known as: minor crimes · petty crime · misdemeanor
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A criminal offense less serious than a felony. Such an offense is typically punishable by fine, imprisonment for a term of one year or less, or both.
Officer Rivera observed Megan Moore striking a parking meter with a metal pipe in plain view. Rivera arrested Moore on the spot for the resulting criminal mischief charge without obtaining a warrant. The arrest stands because the offense occurred in the officer's presence.
Maurice Marshall offered cash to Mina Mehta to start a fight with a rival at a public event so that security would remove the rival. Marshall's statements constituted solicitation of a breach of the peace. The charge is properly brought as a misdemeanor.
Melanie Morris was convicted of a minor theft and received a suspended thirty-day jail term plus probation. The court appointed counsel because the suspended sentence created a potential deprivation of liberty. Morris's conviction is therefore valid under the Sixth Amendment.
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Meredith Maxwell shoved Miguel Mendoza during an argument on a boat deck, causing him to fall and strike his head fatally. The shove violated a simple assault statute. Maxwell faces involuntary manslaughter liability under the unlawful act theory.
Megan Moore intentionally set fire to her own unoccupied cabin located within city limits. The blaze endangered two neighboring homes. Prosecutors charged the distinct misdemeanor of houseburning rather than arson.
Maurice Marshall was convicted of criminal mischief after damaging property valued at $150. The judge increased the fine based on a finding that the act was committed with racial animus. The enhancement requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury.
No. The Fourth Amendment permits a warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor committed in the officer's presence even when the offense is punishable only by a fine and not by incarceration.
A defendant has a Sixth Amendment right to counsel in a misdemeanor prosecution when a suspended jail sentence is imposed because the suspended sentence may result in actual deprivation of liberty.
No. Factual impossibility does not provide a defense to solicitation. The law measures the solicitor's culpability based on the circumstances as the solicitor believed them to be.
A killing that results from the commission of an unlawful act constitutes involuntary manslaughter. Under the misdemeanor-manslaughter rule a killing that occurs in the course of committing a misdemeanor is manslaughter when the misdemeanor is malum in se or the death is a foreseeable consequence.
…law,[^maj-27] others followed Coke in stating that abortion of a quick fetus was a "misprision," a term they translated to mean "misdemeanor."[^maj-28] That their reliance on Coke on this aspect of the law was uncritical and, apparently in all the reported cases, dictum (due probably to the paucity of common-law prosecutions for…