English Criminal Law/Mens rea



{| style="width:65%;"
 * style="background-color: cream; border: solid 1px gray; padding: 1em;" valign="top" |

Intention
Criminal intention can be further broken into two groups, direct and oblique. A direct intention is the willful desire to commit an act. It must be understood that the intention sufficient to amount to mens rea is only the intention to perform the required criminal act, not an intention for the result to occur. Assault occasioning actual bodily harm (Section 47 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861) is a good example here. The requisite mens rea is intention to cause assault. If A intentionally assaults B and harm results, he is guilty of the offence. The fact that he does not intend harm is irrelevant. He intended to do the act, and harm is simply a by-product.
 * }

{| style="width:65%;"
 * style="background-color: cream; border: solid 1px gray; padding: 1em;" valign="top" |

Recklessness
Intention will be more clear from an example: suppose that a man has many desires, some of which are deemed to be too visionary, some he lacks the energy to implement. But if he decides to achieve his desires, and begins to start to act to that end, the desire becomes the intention with which he acts.
 * }

{| style="width:65%;"
 * style="background-color: cream; border: solid 1px gray; padding: 1em;" valign="top" |

Transferred malice
The doctrine of 'transferred malice' operates when there is an unexpected divergence between the defendant's mental state and the occurrence of the actus reus. The mens rea is regarded as transferred when this divergence is immaterial to the definition of the offence. Thus, if D fires a gun intending to kill T but misses and kills V instead, the fact that V's death was unintended does not preclude D's liability for murder. It is sufficient that D intended to kill a person — the identity of that person is irrelevant to the offence definition. Compare this with the situation where D's bullet, instead of hitting T, breaks a window of the nearby house. Here the intention to kill a person cannot be 'transferred' to make D guilty of criminal damage — an offence with a different mens rea requirement.
 * }

{| style="width:65%;"
 * style="background-color: cream; border: solid 1px gray; padding: 1em;" valign="top" |