The general purposes of the provisions governing the definition of offenses are: (1) To forbid and prevent conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests; (2) To subject to public control persons whose conduct indicates that they are disposed to commit crimes; (3) To safeguard conduct that is without fault and which is essentially victimless in its effect from condemnation as criminal; (4) To give fair warning of the nature of the conduct declared to constitute an offense; and (5) To differentiate on reasonable grounds between serious and minor offenses.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-102
Purposes; principles of construction
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case State v. Burlison (1998)
Most recently applied in State v. Iromuanya (August 2006)
Laws 1977, LB 38, § 2.
How often courts cite this section
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.
Official source: Nebraska Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Nebraska statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.