Criminal Law Practice Multiple Choice Practice Questions
Professor Inazu
Spring 2026
The following 10 practice questions are provided to you to give you a sense of the kind of the multiple choice questions you might encounter on the exam. The final exam will last four hours and include one essay question (with multiple parts) and 50 multiple choice questions. You are advised to spend approximately two hours on the essay portion and approximately two hours on the multiple choice portion, which translates to approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds per multiple choice question.
To best approximate test conditions, you should aim to answer these ten practice questions in 25 minutes.
To view the answer key to these questions, click here. To view the answer key with explanations, click here.
1. A defendant is convicted of a single count of murder. At sentencing, the judge says the following. “I find that the defendant deeply regrets his actions and that he is highly unlikely to offend again. Nonetheless, although I could sentence the defendant to as little as 15 years in prison, I am choosing a life sentence. This sentence reflects just punishment for such a heinous crime and will show other offenders that such crimes will not be tolerated.” Which theory or theories of punishment does this sentence appear to reflect?
A) Deterrence.
B) Rehabilitation.
C) Retribution.
D) Both B & C.
E) Both A & C.
2. Robert returns home from work unexpectedly, and finds his spouse having sex with another man, Elbert. Enraged, Robert grabs his gun (which he carries in a belt holster) and within seconds shoots Elbert in the head. Under a traditional homicide system that breaks down homicide into degrees of murder and manslaughter, of which crimes could a jury conceivably find Robert guilty?
A) First-degree premeditated murder only.
B) First-degree premeditated murder and second-degree (non-premeditated) murder.
C) First-degree premeditated murder, second-degree (non-premeditated) murder, and voluntary manslaughter.
D) Second-degree (non-premeditated) murder and involuntary manslaughter.
E) First-degree premeditated murder, second-degree (non-premeditated) murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter.
3. Jill is arrested for sending many thousands of unwanted “spam” emails trying to sell herbal dietary supplements. As it turns out, there is no criminal statute expressly forbidding sending unwanted spam emails. Nonetheless, a court agrees with the government that Jill deserves to be punished by six months in prison, because her conduct was “annoying and bothersome to many citizens.” Is Jill’s punishment consistent with the principles of legality?
A) Yes, because Jill should have known that what she was doing was wrong.
B) Yes, because the court’s action was necessary to redress a significant harm.
C) Yes, because it was foreseeable that her conduct would be criminalized eventually.
D) No, because Jill did not clearly have malicious intent.
E) No, because Jill’s conduct was not prohibited by a written, ascertainable law prior to his alleged crime.
4. Theo sets fire to his warehouse in order to receive a payment from his insurance company. As it happened, a homeless man was illegally living in the basement of the warehouse; he was killed by the fire. Theo recognized that he was committing a serious crime by engaging in arson, but he claims he was extremely careful to search the entire building multiple times before setting the fire to be sure that no one was inside, and that the only reason he didn’t find the homeless man was because the man was hiding from him. Considering all of the homicide theories and doctrines we have covered, what is the most serious homicide crime of which Theo can be convicted?
A) First degree felony murder.
B) Second-degree depraved indifference murder.
C) Involuntary manslaughter.
D) No homicide crime, because he exercised due care.
E) No homicide crime, because the homeless man was contributorily negligent.
5. In 1966, William Barnes shot and wounded police officer Walter T. Barclay Jr. during a botched burglary. Barnes served twenty years in prison. In 2007, twenty-one years after Barnes’s release from prison (and forty-one years after the crime), Barclay died of a urinary tract infection. The district attorney then charged the now 72-year-old Barnes for Barclay’s murder.
A retributivist would disagree with the district attorney’s decision if:
A) Barnes was rehabilitated.
B) Barnes’s shooting of Barclay was not the cause of Barclay’s death.
C) Barnes’s family doesn’t deserve to be punished further.
D) Officer Barclay’s family concluded time served had been sufficient.
E) Society concluded that Barnes should be forgiven.
6. A mother of four children age 2 to 8 left her children alone on the first floor of their home while she went upstairs to text a friend. While she upstairs, the children began playing recklessly and the 2-year old ran into a wall and died. The police arrested the mother for involuntary manslaughter. Are the mother’s actions sufficient to warrant conviction for involuntary manslaughter?
A) Yes, it was fully foreseeable that the child could die without the mother there to supervise and monitor the situation.
B) Yes, the woman’s actions evidence a callous disregard of human life sufficient to establish involuntary manslaughter.
C) No, her actions were irresponsible but do not rise to the kind of culpability that is required for involuntary manslaughter.
D) No, she did not have the depraved heart intent to kill that is required for involuntary manslaughter.
E) None of the above.
7. In Dudley & Stephens, the fact that the boy was likely to die anyway is treated by the court as:
A) A partial defense
B) A mitigating factor in commuting the sentence
C) Legally irrelevant
D) Evidence of intent
E) Evidence of consent
8. Jim and Susan are close friends who work together in a large consulting firm. Each of them was separately defrauding the company through fake expense reports. Jim made up expenses and filed fake reports to Susan. Susan received Jim’s fake reports, assuming they were genuine, and then submitted inflated versions of Jim’s reports to accounting so she could pocket the difference. The reports she returned to Jim were fake, but he assumed they were genuine. In other words, Jim and Susan assisted each other in processing their fake reports, but each believed the other’s reports were genuine. Law enforcement discovered both schemes and charged Jim and Susan with fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. What is the likely outcome of their defense of the conspiracy charge?
A) The conspiracy charge will be dismissed because they can’t be punished for the completed crime and the conspiracy at the same time.
B) The conspiracy charge is valid because they don’t have to know what the other is doing to have a conspiracy.
C) The conspiracy is valid because both individuals defrauded their employer out of funds and they helped each other further their respective crimes.
D) The conspiracy will be dismissed because they had no agreement to further a crime together; rather each thought that the other’s activities were legitimate.
E) Both B and C.
9. Jordan and Casey have been flirting all evening. Later, Jordan follows Casey into a bedroom, closes the door, and begins intercourse. Casey says “I don’t want this,” pushes at Jordan’s chest, and turns her face away. Jordan continues for another minute, later insisting that he thought Casey was “playing hard to get” and that he believed she would ultimately welcome the sex. In this jurisdiction, rape is defined as intercourse by force and without consent, but the cases are divided over what mens rea attaches to nonconsent.
Which is the best answer?
A) Jordan will likely be acquitted if he honestly believed Casey consented, even if that belief was unreasonable.
B) Jordan will likely be convicted because any intercourse in the absence of actual consent is rape regardless of mens rea.
C) Jordan’s liability turns on what mens rea the jurisdiction requires as to nonconsent; an honest but unreasonable mistake might exculpate in a knowledge jurisdiction but not in a negligence jurisdiction.
D) Jordan cannot be guilty unless Casey suffered bodily injury.
E) Jordan cannot be guilty unless the prosecution proves Jordan used force independent of the intercourse itself.
10. A statute that restricts “loitering” and “loud noises” raises potential issues of:
A) Overbreadth.
B) Vagueness.
C) Insufficient delegation of authority.
D) A and B.
E) A and C.