What makes a crime a crime would some ones responsibility level be different if there mental state isn’t stable? In most cases the person committing a crime intended to do something that the state legislature or Congress has stated that it is wrong."mens rea" is a concept is based on a belief that people should be punished only when they have acted in a way that makes them morally blameworthy. In the legal system people who purposely take part in the behavior that is prohibited by a law are responsible. "Ordinary" negligence is not a crime. For example, careless drivers are not usually unlawfully prosecuted if they cause an accident, they may have to pay civil costs to those harmed by their reach less behavior.
Sometimes carelessness can amount to mens rea. Most of the time carelessness can be a crime when a person "recklessly disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk." It is up to the judge and juries to evaluate a person's actions and decide whether the carelessness is serious enough to fall under mens rea. But people who accidentally commit illegal conduct may be morally innocent. Someone who breaks the law because he or she honestly mis interprets reality lacks “mens rea” and should not be charged with or convicted of a crime. For example, if person A hits person B because the person reasonably but mistakenly thought person B was about to hit him, person A would not have mens rea.
While a "mistake of fact" can negate mens rea, a "mistake of law" usually can’t. When people do not realize what they are doing is illegal but still do it intentionally, they are almost always guilty. For example, if Person A sells cocaine believing that it is sugar, person A has made a mistake of fact and lacks mens rea. However, if person A ...
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... they are too jumbled to follow the many rules enforced by correctional facilities and, as a result, are more likely to be housed in solitary confinement: Numerous studies suggest further that “many offenders with serious mental illnesses cannot tolerate the severe conditions of solitary confinement and are particularly likely to experience mental and physical deterioration.“
These experiences--the trauma of physical and sexual victimization and conditions of self-contained detention, either alone or in combination--may aggravate inmates’ psychiatric symptoms or even precipitate the onset of new mental disorders. Inadequate mental health treatment available in many prisons and especially in solitary housing units compounds this psychiatric deterioration. Not shockingly, offenders with major mental illnesses are mostly prone to commit suicide while incarcerated.
Men rea is used in determining whether an act is considered a crime, and is applied to an act if there is indication that the act was committed with intent or knowledge or a degree of recklessness. The mens era of murder is having malice intentions prior to killing someone, so the person has an intent to murder. The argument that helps support that Martineau did not have the mens rea for murder, is the fact that he did not shoot the couple, and instead it was his friend Tremblay who had fried the pellet pistol. Martineau cannot be held accountable since he had no malice intentions to kill the couple, his intentions were strictly centred with the break and enter, there is no evidence
Today, prisons are the nation’s primary providers of mental health care, and some do a better job than others. Pete Earley focuses his research on the justice system in Miami, Florida. He documents how the city’s largest prison has only one goal for their mentally ill prisoners: that they do not kill themselves. The prison has no specialized
This is a completely separate and alternative aspect of mens rea, and it is assumed that the accused does not have an intention to kill. There is a clear difference between the mens rea of ‘recklessness’ for crimes other than murder, and ‘wicked recklessness’ for murder. This was determined in Cawthorne v HMA when the accused fired a high-velocity rifle through a wooden door into a room where four people were situated in an attempt to escape from him. He made no attempt to stop any danger from happening but fired five shots at a height where it may have been foreseeable that he could cause serious harm or injury. On the assumption that this intent was only to frighten these people and not to kill them, the appeal court still determined that the accused had shown the wicked recklessness necessary for murder. In this case it was held that the mens rea of murder, or attempted murder, could be proved by such recklessness that to show that the accused was regardless of the consequences of his actions, that he was completely indifferent to whether anyone died as a result of his actions. Cawthorne is now a clear precedent both that the mens rea of criminal attempt Is exactly the same as that for the completed crime and that wicked recklessness is a separate form of the mens rea of murder. Wicked recklessness is described by Gordon as recklessness which is “so gross that it indicates a state of mind of a deliberate
First, the first element of a crime is Mens rea. “The mental element is known as the mens rea, or mental state, of the defendant.” (Hames & Ekern, 2009) The prosecution lawyers try to prove if the defendant has knowledge of the crime. What was the defendant’s mental state? Were they aware of the effect of the crime, did the defendant plan the crime, o...
Test of the “harmless error” rule. Law and Human Behavior Vol. 21, No. 1, p.
Since 2000, a total of 15 have died in custody, according to the advocacy group’s records. Of those 15 of whom have passed while in custody many of those deaths were results of suicides of detainees who suffered serious mental health issues that were not properly addressed in custody. In Cleveland and Rousseau’s article Mental Health Impact of Detention they argue that the implications such as mandatory detention is associated with high levels of psychiatric symptoms, which increase with time in detention and tend to be aggravated frequently. In a study conducted in the United States, after a median detention of 5 months, 86% of detainees showed clinical levels of depression, 77% had clinical anxiety and 50% had clinical post-traumatic stress disorder. A few months later, the mental health of those who were still detained had continued to deteriorate. The curtailment of physical mobility through indefinite detentions alone is sufficient to cause depression but mental states are also aggravated by the fact that detainees have little ability to make international phone calls, access to their funds, and access to legal
defenses and justification defenses. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Focusing on excuse defense, some examples are known as; age, mental disorder, automatism, mistake of fact, and mistake of law. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Mental disorder is defined as “disease of the mind.” (Lawteacher.net, 2014) This excuse supports that the defendant was not thinking normally at the time of the criminal act and therefor did not understand the act of the crime they committed. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Some examples of mental disorder are known as paranoia, schizophrenia, and depression. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Automatism is used as an excuse that the environment around the defendant caused them to commit the criminal act involuntarily. This excuse focuses on actus reus, and is hands down one of the hardest circumstances to prove in a trial. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) Mistake of Fact is used in trial to downplay or eliminate mens rea in a criminal act that has been committed. (Lawteacher.net, 2014) The source of this excuse is that the defendant is unaware of the law that they have broken that will charge them formally. A very popular use of mistake of fact is used in deadly force because it is based off of pure judgment which may vary from one person to another.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will explore the increasing incarceration rate of the mentally ill in the jails and prisons of the United States, the lack of medical services available to the mentally ill, the roles of the police, the correctional officers and the community and the revolving door phenomenon (Soderstrom, 2007). It will also review some of the existing and present policies that have been ineffective and present new policies that can be effective with the proper resources and training. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that the criminalization of the mentally ill has become a public health problem and that our policy should focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
The way in which liability is determined seems to be an irony in itself. The civil law requires people to act with reasonable care, meaning not hurting others or damaging property. Also it requires the defendant to do what a reasonable person would have done. (Cannell) However, my question is, if a person is not using a reasonable mind then isn’t that person insane or otherwise mentally handicapped?
...e jury or judge may fail to realize is that those who suffer a mental disorder lack free will with some of their actions. The most common characteristic seen in those who have mental disorders is the lack of empathy. This lack of empathy plays a role in how gruesome the crimes may be. According to the “men’s rea” no one can be found guilty of a crime if they had no knowledge that their actions were wrong. With the mens rea, the defendant is not required to feel guilty but to know their actions were wrong. If a person cognitive activity is abnormal and they lack empathy due to their mental state how can they be found guilty before the law.
of law has proved to be confusing to both juries and judges due to the
Mens rea refers to the mental element involved in committing a crime and is concerned with the guilty mind of the defendant. Both intent and recklessness are categories of mens rea that are different and have different levels of culpability.
To be criminally liable of any crime in the UK, a jury has to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that the defendant committed the Actus Reus and the Mens Rea. The Actus Reus is the physical element of the crime; it is Latin for ‘guilty act’. The defendant’s act must be voluntary, for criminal liability to be proven. The Mens Rea is Latin for guilty mind; it is the most difficult to prove of the two. To be pronounced guilty of a crime, the Mens Rea requires that the defendant planned, his or her actions before enacting them. There are two types of Mens Rea; direct intention and oblique intention. Direct intention ‘corresponds with everyday definition of intention, and applies where the accused actually wants the result that occurs, and sets out to achieve it’ (Elliot & Quinn, 2010: 59). Oblique intention is when the ‘accused did not desire a particular result but in acting he or she did realise that it might occur’ (Elliot & Quinn, 2010: 60). I will illustrate, by using relevant case law, the difference between direct intention and oblique intention.
A defence in criminal law arises when conditions exist to negate specific elements of the crime: the actus reus when actions are involuntary, the mens rea when the defendant is unaware of the significance of their conduct, or both. These defences will mitigate or eliminate liability from a criminal offence. Insanity, automatism and diminished responsibility are examples of said defences. They each share characteristics but can be distinguished in their scope and application.
According to Brody and Acker, mens rea is when a person honestly did not know that their conduct was against the law and had