Fault in criminal law
In criminal law, a fault refers to the mental state or level of culpability required for a person to be held responsible for a crime. It encompasses concepts such as intention, recklessness, and negligence. The determination of fault is crucial in establishing criminal liability and sentencing.
5 Key excerpts on "Fault in criminal law"
eBook - ePub- (Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Straightforward Publishing Digital(Publisher)
...A party may also be found guilty of failing to act if there is a duty imposed on him by virtue of the special relationship between him and the victim. One such case was Instan 1893 where a niece failed to get help for her aunt with whom she was living. The aunt contracted gangrene in her leg and died and the niece was held guilty of manslaughter. Two other areas where omission implies liability are where the defendant has voluntarily accepted responsibility for the other and where there is liability under a continuous act. The Mens Rea of a crime In most cases it will be necessary that the defendant has committed the act with the relevant mens rea or the degree of blameworthiness required by the offence. Some offences, such as the offence of strict liability, outlined later do not require fault to be proved. Mens Rea means the mental element, or state of mind, that the defendant must possess at the time of performing whatever crime he or she is involved in. Different degrees of mens rea This varies depending on the seriousness of the offence. In the most serious criminal offences the prosecution will usually have to prove a high degree of blameworthiness. The defendant will only be held to be guilty if it can be proved that he fully intended to commit the crime. Crimes of specific intent Murder is a crime of specific intent where the accused will only be convicted by the jury if they are convinced that he meant to kill or cause grievous bodily harm. Intention is also needed for theft crimes. The accused will not be convicted unless it can be demonstrated that he took property with the intention of permanently depriving the other person of it. Crime of basic intent There are certain crimes that do not require such a high degree of fault to be demonstrated. They can be committed either with intention or recklessly...
eBook - ePub- Joycelyn M. Pollock(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Criminal Code. Recently, one group wrote that: We argue that an issue at the core of federal criminal law reform is the restoration of the mens rea requirement. Addressing the erosion of mens rea requires appreciating the initial importance of mens rea, and the connection between that erosion and the growth of federal criminal law. This erosion of mens rea has been toxic to the moral legitimacy of federal criminal law. 47 To summarize: Mens rea can be defined as criminal state of mind. It is not just intent, although that is one level of mens rea. The four different levels of criminal states of mind that are recognized in the Model Penal Code and in many state criminal codes are purposely, knowingly, recklessly, and negligently. The level of mens rea is related to the seriousness of the crime and the degree of punishment. Although we hold negligent offenders responsible for their actions, we do not believe they are as culpable as those who commit their crime with premeditation. Specific intent can be roughly equated to purposely, and general intent can be roughly equated to knowingly. Transferred intent is a doctrine whereby the offender is charged with the crime that he intended regardless of who is actually harmed. QUICK CHECK #3 It is easiest to see the different levels of mens rea in homicide cases...
eBook - ePubJustice, Liability, And Blame
Community Views And The Criminal Law
- Paul H. Robinson(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...4 Doctrines of Culpability: When Is One’s Violation of a Legal Rule Blameworthy? Once we have determined what we want our legal code of conduct to be (the subject of Chapters 2 and 3), we need to answer the question of when liability should or should not follow a code violation. Even if a person violates one of the criminal law’s rules, it does not follow that liability is appropriate. The condemnatory nature of criminal law requires that inadvertent and unavoidable violations not be punished. If a person’s violation is blameless, that individual ought to be free from liability even though he or she may well have caused the harm or evil prohibited by the doctrines of criminalization. Furthermore, liability is properly reserved for violations of sufficient seriousness committed with sufficient culpability to justify condemnation as criminal. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the criminal law’s and the community’s views on this issue of the minimum requirements for liability. The law tests for adequate blameworthiness in two ways. First, it requires proof that the person’s violation did not occur by virtue of blameless accident or mistake. This is achieved by requiring the prosecution to prove a person’s culpability-purpose, knowledge, or recklessness (or occasionally negligence)-as to each element of an offense. As a second test, the law provides the person with the opportunity to raise various defenses-such as insanity, immaturity, duress, or involuntary intoxication-that suggest that, even if a person had the required culpable state of mind, the individual nonetheless is not responsible for his or her violative actions. In this chapter, we discuss the studies we conducted that concern the first kind of minimum requirement, the culpable state of mind...
eBook - ePub- Alison Cronin(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...4 Mens rea, metaphysics and the manifest assessment of fault 4.1 Subjective individualism and the presumption of intention The way in which the law has developed in relation to fault attribution has had a profound effect in relation to the development of theories of corporate criminality. The combined effect of the demise of the presumption of voluntariness and the expanded concept of mens rea has led to the primary enquiry focusing on the defendant’s state of mind, a metaphysical mind that the fictional corporate entity simply cannot possess. However, given that the need to prove mens rea has been the real hurdle to corporate prosecution, typical academic accounts of the law’s approach to corporate criminality fail to acknowledge that “mens rea” has not been constant in terms of either its substantive meaning or the way in which it is attributed to the defendant and proved. While Chapter 3 addressed the former dynamic and the presumption relating to the voluntariness doctrine, this chapter addresses that lacuna in the context of other mental states. It will be recalled that proof of the orthodox canons of liability turned upon the operation of two evidential presumptions. Chapter 3 identified the combination of factors which led to the demise of the presumption of voluntariness and this chapter will reveal how the presumption of intention suffered a similar fate. According to this presumption, a defendant was presumed to have intended the natural consequences of his act. This conclusion was based on the assumption that an act foreseen was an act intended and, further, that the defendant had the mental capacity of a reasonable man such that he would have foreseen what were deemed its natural consequences. The presumption of intention of natural consequences, like that of voluntariness, presupposed that an initial consideration of the appearance of the conduct had taken place...
eBook - ePub- Kenny Chin(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge-Cavendish(Publisher)
...When a soldier kills during wartime, it is generally lawful. Malice aforethought, which means intention to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm, is the mens rea of murder. There used to be a further requirement that the death must occur within a year and one day. This describes a consequence of the guilty act and is, therefore, also an actus reus. The Law Reform (Year and Day Rule) Act 1996 has, however, abolished this requirement. In R v Larsonneur (1933), the defendant was convicted of being found in the UK without having leave (that is, permission) to enter, despite the fact that she had been forcibly brought into the jurisdiction in the custody of the Irish Free State police. The case set out the rule that it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove that the defendant caused the state of affairs. Generally, omission cannot give rise to criminal liability except in some specific situations. In R v Miller (1983), the defendant was squatting in a house and fell asleep holding a cigarette. He awoke and found that the mattress was smouldering, but he simply moved to another room to continue his sleep. The House of Lords held that, although the defendant created a dangerous situation accidentally, he made no attempt to mitigate the damage. In the circumstances, he was under a duty to act and failure to do so gave rise to criminal liability. Other duties of this nature can arise from statute, such as certain parental, family and contractual relationships. Mens rea Mens rea refers to the mental elements of a crime or the offender’s state of mind when the crime is being committed. This can be intention, recklessness or gross negligence. Intention There are direct and indirect (or oblique) intentions. Direct intention occurs when a person desires an event and his purpose is to cause that event. It is not as straight forward for indirect intention...
