The approach of A First-Year Course in Criminal Law: Trials, Appeals, Theories, Third Edition focuses students on preparing to discuss a single case per lecture. The author’s philosophy is Teach one case a day and do it well.

To help students understand the big picture as well as the details, the organization strives for unification rather than departmentalization. Rather than treat crimes and defenses as tubs on their own bottoms, the defenses within the crimes are presented. In other words, the book brings out that crime occurs only in the absence of fully or partially successful exculpatory pleas. Although homicide is the crime that organizes the book, the elements and scope of other crimes are presented within the context of the law of homicide. Comprehension of assault, burglary, kidnapping, mayhem, robbery, and rape is crucial to the cases used to present the law of felony murder. Those crimes are analyzed in the cases, questions, and notes sufficiently to provide students with competency in the grammar of those crimes.

New to the Third Edition:

More patient explication of chapter introductions and sub-sections Reorganization of questions and notes to improve flow and avoid unintended redundancies Improved internal cross-references Increased emphasis on the function of mental illness in the role of fear in homicide cases Enhanced searchable citations Elaborated index Accounts for intervening changes in the law