Law of Crimes Week 2

PROFESSOR ABHINAV MEHROTRA

 “Actus Non Facit Reum Nisi Mens Sit Rea”

 An act does not make a person guilty, unless the mind is guilty or blameworthy.
 Break it down:
Actus = The act or action
Non facit = not doing / not done
reum = the accused / defendant
nisi = unless
mens = mental condition / of the mind/intention
sit = to be
rea = reum / the accused / defendent
“Actus Non Facit Reum Nisi Mens Sit
Rea”
 According to the maxim, a crime has two elements-

Crime= a physical, wrongful deed (the “actus reus”), and a guilty mind
that produces the act (the “mens rea”)

 A guilty act must be done with a guilty mind, i.e. an intention to

commit the crime.
 For example, hitting someone with your car with intention to kill vs. a
road accident leading in death.
Actus Reus

 “A guilty act”
 Physical element of criminal liability.
 The first step in proving criminal liability is to prove that the defendant
committed the activity that is involved in the crime.
 An Act can also be proved by conduct and there must be a direct causal link
between the conduct or activity of the accused and the resultant damage or
harm.

Will it also include a failure to do an act or an omission?

Actus Reus

 No. Activities and Omissions are treated differently in law.

 Person A walking past a drowning person B. Person B can be saved if person A
holds their hand. Person A doesn’t hold their hand and person B drowns.
Person A is not liable.
 An omission will only be punished under certain conditions, e.g.- when there was
a duty to act on the person (statutory, contractual or because of their
relationship).
Mens Rea

 Guilty mind. Involves proving the intention to commit the crime or cause
harm.
 Has to be proven by the prosecution.
 Usually not proved in civil liability. Why?- Standard of proof attached to
criminal liability is higher.
 Degrees of intention- purposeful, knowing, reckless, and negligent. A crime
committed purposefully would carry a more severe punishment than if the
offender was merely reckless.
 Exception- Strict liability offences. E.g.- statutory rape
Intention and Knowledge
NEGLIGENCE / RECKLESSNESS

 Failure of a person to act with the standard of care expected of a

reasonable or prudent person, in the circumstances where the
law requires such reasonable behaviour.
Eg - Medical negligence

 RECKLESSNESS
When a person is indifferent towards the risk and takes risk anyway.
The risk must be substantial enough that the action represents a gross deviation from
what a reasonable law abiding person would do.
INTENTION MOTIVE KNOWLEDGE
NEGLIGENCE RECKLESSNESS –

Fred and his new wife, Betty, decide to go to Hawaii on their honeymoon. Wilma, Fred’s jealous
ex-wife finds out what flight they are on and plants a bomb on the plane with the intent of killing
Fred and Betty. Wilma knows that there will be ninety-eight other passengers on the flight and,
though she feels bad that they will die too, her hatred of Fred and Betty is so strong that she decides
to proceed with her plan anyway. Sure enough, the bomb explodes in the middle of the flight, and
all one hundred people on board are killed.

Wilma has no idea what time the flight takes off, but she sets the bomb to go off at 7:00 in the morning.
Sure enough, the bomb goes off at 7:00 in the morning, killing a baggage handler who is loading
luggage onto the plane. In this case, Wilma has not purposefully killed the baggage handler since it was
not her intent to kill him. Further, she did not knowingly kill him because it was not certain that the
baggage handler’s death would result from Wilma’s actions. However, because there was a substantial
and unjustified risk that Wilma’s actions would result in someone’s death or serious injury, she has acted
recklessly.
Intention and Negligence
Intention and Recklessness
Causation

 Defendant's conduct (or omission) caused the harm or damage.

 Two Stage enquiry- Factual and Legal Causation
 Factual Causation is the first step and it must be established that but for the
defendant’s conduct, the harm wouldn’t have been caused. (But for Test)
 For example, if A threw an arrow in the air and it hurts B, then but for the
action of A throwing the arrow, B wouldn’t have suffered the harm.
 If the defendant has passed the first test, then move on to legal causation test. He
should also have in legal terms caused the result.
Causation
 How is legal Causation established? –Proximate Cause Test - legally liable cause is the
one closest to or most proximate to the injury.
 The proximate cause of an injury is the event or act closely related to the injury. This
doesn't mean that the act in question must be the closest in time to the injury. Instead, it
must be the primary, or predominant, cause of the injury.

 Driver of “Car A” runs a red light and hits “Car B,” which had a green light, causing injury to the
driver of Car B. Driver of Car A had a duty to not run the red light, and, assuming no extenuating
circumstances that excused running the red light, his actions in doing so directly (and therefore,
proximately) caused injuries to the driver of Car B.
 Intervening Cause?
A critically injures B. As B is wheeled to an ambulance, she is struck by lightning. She would not
have been struck if she had not been injured in the first place. Clearly then, A caused B's whole
injury on the ‘but for’ test. However, at law, the intervention of a supervening event renders the
defendant not liable for the injury caused by the lightning.
Causation

 Foreseeability – The damage caused has to be reasonably

foreseeable for it to be a legal cause. Test- Whether the person causing
the injury should have reasonably foreseen the general consequences
that would result because of his or her conduct.
If X left a candle burning in his apartment while he was at work, and, subsequently, a
burglar broke into his apartment and knocked the candle over, burning down the
entire building. X would likely not be liable for injuries sustained because the
burglar was an unforeseeable, superseding cause.
Causation

 Exception to foreseeability- Egg shell skull rule

D commits a minor assault on V who has a heart condition and V suffers a
heart attack and dies. D is liable for the death of V even though such an
attack would result in no physical harm to some one without a heart
condition. But D must have knowledge that it will cause some harm but the
degree of harm will depend on the victim. “You take you victim as they
come.”
 If A punched B in the jaw, it is foreseeable that B will suffer a bodily injury that he
will need to go to the hospital for. However, if his jaw is very weak, and his jaw
comes completely off from my punch, then the doctor bills, which would have
been about $5,000 for wiring his jaw shut had now become $100,000 for a full-blown
jaw re-attachment. A would still be liable for the entire $100,000, even though
$95,000 of those damages were not reasonably foreseeable.
Doctrine of Transfer of Malice

 When the intention to harm one individual inadvertently causes a second

person to be hurt instead, the perpetrator is still held responsible.
 If a murderer intends to kill A, but accidentally kills B instead, the intent is
transferred from A to B, and the killer is held to have had criminal intent.
R v KENNEDY (No 2) [2007] UKHL
38
 The defendant and victim were living together in a hostel. The victim visited the
defendants room and asked for “a bit to make him sleep”. The defendant prepared a
dose of heroin for the victim, then passed him the syringe so that he could self
inject. The victim did so, and died several hours later as a result of choking on his own vomit
while under the influence of the drug. The defendant was convicted of unlawful act
manslaughterand appealed.
 The key question before the House of Lords was whether the victim’s act in self injecting was an
intervening act such as to break the chain of causation?
 HELD - the victim was a fully informed and consenting adult, who had freely
 and voluntarily self-administered the drug without any pressure from the
 defendant, this was an intervening act. The chain of causation between the
 defendant’s act in supplying the drug and the victim’s death was therefore incomplete. The
 reasoning of the House was based on the need for the criminal law to respect free will and
 to treat the victim, being an adult of sound mind, as an autonomous individual. The
 defendant’s conviction was therefore overturned.
REGINA v. BLAUE

 The defendant stabbed a young woman of 18 with a knife, which

penetrated her lung. The cause of death was bleeding into the pleural
cavity, which would not have been fatal if she accepted the medical
treatment .

 The judge, in directing the jury on the issue of causation, said that
they might think that they had little option but to find that the stab
wounds were still an operative or substantial cause of death when the
victim died. The defendant was convicted of manslaughter on the
ground of diminished responsibility.
REGINA v. BLAUE

 Held, dismissing the appeal, that the death of the victim was
caused by loss of blood as a result of the stab wounds inflicted by the
defendant and the fact that she had refused a blood transfusion did
not break the causal connection between the stabbing and the death;

That, since the criminal law did not require the victim to mitigate her
injuries, and since Q an assailant was not entitled to claim that the
victim's refusal of medical treatment because of her religious beliefs
was unreasonable, the jury were entitled to find that the stab wounds
were an operative or substantial cause of death.
Public Prosecutor; v.s.Mushunooru
Suryanarayana-Moorty
 This is an appeal by the Public Prosecutor on behalf of Government
against the acquittal of one Suryanarayana Murthi, on a charge of having
murdered the girl, Rajalakshmi.

 The accused, with the intention of killing Appala Narasimhulu, gave him
some sweetmeat (halva) in which a poison containing arsenic and
mercury in soluble form had been mixed
 Appala Narasimhulu, after eating a portion of the sweetmeat, threw
away the remainder, and it was then picked up by Rajalakshmi without the
knowledge of the accused.
 The question which we have to consider in this appeal is whether, on the facts
stated above, the accused is guilty of the murder of Rajalakshmi.
Public Prosecutor; v.s.Mushunooru
Suryanarayana-Moorty
 it is clear that he did intend to cause the death of Appala Narasimhulu
 It is enough if he “causes the death” of any one by doing an act with the intention
of “causing death” to any one, whether the person intended to be killed or any one
else.
 Nor is it necessary that the death should be caused directly by the action of the
offender, without contributory action by the person whose death is caused or by
some other person