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A.R.S. § 13-103

Abolition of common law offenses and affirmative defenses; definition

Applied in 10 court decisions — leading case Vo v. Superior Court (1992)

Most recently applied in May v. Ryan (March 2017)

How often courts cite this section

196519701980199020002010201720
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

A. All common law offenses and affirmative defenses are abolished. No conduct or omission constitutes an offense or an affirmative defense unless it is an offense or an affirmative defense under this title or under another statute or ordinance.

B. For the purposes of this section, "affirmative defense" means a defense that is offered and that attempts to excuse the criminal actions of the accused or another person for whose actions the accused may be deemed to be accountable. Affirmative defense does not include any justification defense pursuant to chapter 4 of this title or any defense that either denies an element of the offense charged or denies responsibility, including alibi, misidentification or lack of intent.

Official source: Arizona State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Arizona statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.