Concept of Actus Reus and Mens Rea

1. Explain the concept of actus reus and mens rea generally.
2. Explain the actus reus of murder.
3. Explain the importance of voluntariness to this concept.
4. Describe causation in fact; causation in law, and omission.
5. Explain the mens rea of murder using decided cases.
6. Explain the difficulty of proving intention using decided cases.

The law country plays imperative role in order to maintain the law and order of the country and in protecting the fundamental rights of the people resides in the country. English law is one of the ancient laws and have great influence on the laws of several different countries. The law mainly help the plaintiffs in achieving proper judgement from the jurisdiction and to provide reasonable punishment to the defendants (Anthony, 2002). The criminal law of the country help in punishing the criminals, who commit crime within the jurisdiction of the country. However, it is not easy for the court to provide judgement against a defendant to accuse the defendant for guilty of murder, because, legally it is not easy to accuse a defendant for guilty of murder. In this easy, different types of legal concept has been used to analyze the law and the conceptions that should be meet in order establish murder in English law and for this various case law is used (Blomsma, 2012).        

The concept of the actus reus which shows the physical act of committing an offence with exceeding the limits of the acts. It can also be represented as the state of the omission state in order to create the state of being (Boch, 2000). For instance, if a person is committing an illegal narcotic, one must be acting or failing to act very lightly in the state of the possession and thus it also helps in failing of the state of the being. Omissions are also made to act as a crime which represents that the failure of the act means the failure of the law. According to the case of Pagett 1983 and White 1910, the act of Actus Reus is seemed to be fulfilled the choices. Also the case study of Airedale NHS Trust v Bland 1993 gives the justification to the concept of Actus reus.   

The concept of the Mens rea means a physical act that shows the commission of the criminal act while the guilt mind represents the second act. The guilty mind here is referred to as the reckless, knowledge and the intention representing the accused. It signifies the misdeed or the wrongful consequences (Foster, 2008). The case of Mens rea can be proved from the case of Woolin 1998 and the case of the Nedrick 1986 and Hancock 1986 can prove the concept of Mens Rea.

Actus Reus of Murder

The actus reus of murder includes unlawful killing of the human beings. It consists of all the elements of crime other than state of mind of defendant. It is considered to be malice that has been interpreted by courts as the meaning an intention to kill (Gaskill, 2000). The murder conviction commonly carries mandatory sentence life and the judge passing the sentences cannot pass the lesser sentence and it does not matter how to mitigate the circumstances. It requires proof that unlawfully defendant killed the person within the peace of Queen. Therefore, it shows the intention of a person to kill or killed a person. The cobncept of this case can be proved by the Airedale NHS Trust v Bland 1993 provides proper justification for proving the unlawful murder explanation.        

According to the context of the actus reus, the importance of the voluntariness or the voluntary actions that can be modified are the physical force that helps in the creation of the spontaneous reflex actions which shows no control over the actions and thus it also helps in the formation of the conduct (Humphries, 2009). It also provides the state of the case that are included in the context of voluntariness is the case of the R v Larsonneur (1933) 24 Cr App R 74. The importance also indicates the acts of the omissions that deals with the duty arising from statute, duty arising from the contract and the voluntary assumption creation and the reliance (Kirk, 2011).

The causation in law depicts the occurrence of the certain consequences where the prosecution must prove that the defendant has caused the consequences and thus let the consequences to be occurred (McDonagh, 2003). For example, in the prosecution of the murder case, the prosecution must prove that the victim has died in the section 18 of the offence act 1861 against the person where the victim was found to be wounded. Thus in this case the criminal damage of the property takes place. There are two types of the causation in the law i.e. causation in fact and the causation in law which generally depicts the homicide case.

Omission deals with the failure of the act or the conduct that a person criminally conducts. This helps in the failure of the act of the liability failing to act and thus the defendant is taken under the considerations of the legal duty for taking the positive actions (O’Neill and O’Neill, 2011).

Importance of Voluntariness

Mens rea is a Latin language and the meaning of the mens rea in English is guilty mind, the criminals, who commit any crime need to be in a specific state of mind or mens rea before they commit the crime or can be judged guilty. There are several offence, when the mens rea is called intending to commit the act; however, few offence need differentiate state of mind which is intending to reason   of death, the criminal has the knowledge of dreadful consequence (Block and Hostettler, 2002). The mens rea provide the explanation that the crime of murder is performed intentionally before the crime the mind of the defendant is in a particular state of mind when he/she plan to murder someone, thus the mind was guilty. In the case of Hyam V DPP  (1975) AC55, the defendant was not intentionally murder but she was aware that what she did could harm significantly to the plaintiff. There is high degree of possibilities that by the action of the defendant the plaintiff Mrs Booth could be injured substantially and could be die (Rodger and MacCulloch, 2009). Thus, for this reason court gave the judgement by accusing the defendant for guilty of murder.         

In the given case study, the defendant put the burning newspapers through letter of house of Booth to scare Mrs Booth and caused death of two children of her. However, she claimed that her intention was not to kill but it happened unfortunately (O’Sullivan, 2014). Therefore, it becomes difficult of proving the intention to kill in the case as because she accepted the fact that it was not done by her intentionally. Although, after the investigation of case it has been proved that the intention was to kill and Lord Hailsham LC said that the intention of her constitute of the mental element in the murder. Therefore, the intention of defendant was highly to cause bodily harm or death that was sufficient as per the mens rea for murder.          

Conclusion

This report covers all the details regarding the English law which signifies each and every detail that are required for the explanation of the actus reus and the Mens rea. Thus it also shows the importance’s of the voluntariness in the context of the actus reus which determines the objectives of this report (O’Neill and O’Neill, 2011). This report also provides the brief explanation of the causation of the law and the commission and that also helps in providing the explanation of a case related to the subject with mentioning the difficulties in this report.

References

Anthony, G. (2002). UK Public law and European law. Oxford [England]: Portland, Or.

Block, B. and Hostettler, J. (2002). Famous cases. Winchester: Waterside Press.

Blomsma, J. (2012). Mens rea and defences in European criminal law. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Intersentia.

Boch, C. (2000). EC law in the UK. Harlow, England: Longman.

Foster, N. (2008). EU law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gaskill, M. (2000). Crime and mentalities in early modern England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Humphries, D. (2009). Women, violence, and the media. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Kirk, E. (2011). EU law. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman.

O’Neill, A. and O’Neill, A. (2011). EU law for UK lawyers. Oxford: Hart.

O’Sullivan, C. (2014). Mens rea , motive and assisted suicide: does the DPP’s Policy go too far?. Leg Stud (Soc Leg Scholars), 35(1), pp.96-113.

Rodger, B. and MacCulloch, A. (2009). Competition law and policy in the EC and UK. London: Routledge-Cavendish.