Mens rea definition

Mens rea. ’ means the state of mind that by law must be proven to convict a particular defendant of a particular crime. E.O. 14294, sec. 3(c).

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Mens rea means the state of mind that by law must be proven to convict a particular defendant of a particular crime. There are several such mental states in the law applied by Federal courts. Two common mental states are "knowingly" and "willfully." A defendant acts "knowingly" with respect to an element of the offense if he or she has knowledge of the essential facts comprising that element. In addition, a defendant "willfully" violates a statute if he or she acts with a "bad purpose" that is with "knowledge that his [or her] conduct is unlawful." Model Criminal Jury Instructions (3d Cir. 2018), ch. 5, sec. 5.02 cmt. (quotation marks omitted). By contrast, strict liability offenses do not require the government to prove mens rea. For instance, the jury instructions for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit note that "[s]ome federal crimes are also strict or absolute liability offenses, without any mental state requirement." Id. at ch. 5, General Introduction to Mental State Instructions.

Mens rea means the mental state required for crime. Crimes that require mens rea are crimes of specific or general intent. Crimes that do not require mens rea are crimes of strict liability.

Examples of Mens rea in a sentence

• As Richards and Smart have argued, albeit in the context of humanoid robots, failure to heed this warning may mean that “we might hold the designers less responsible for [the robot’s] actions”,52 because if “it seems to have some limited form of free will…how can we expect the designers to cover every eventuality?” 48 See, more generally, Mohamed Ellewa Badar, The Concept of Mens Rea in International Criminal Law: The Case for a Unified Approach (Hart Publishing, 2015).

• The word ‘negligently’, both in legal and in non-legal contexts, makes an essential reference to an omission to do what is thus required: it is not a flatly descriptive psychological expression like ‘his mind was a blank’.” H.L.A. ▇▇▇▇, “Negligence, Mens Rea and Criminal Responsibility,” in Punishment and Responsibility 136, 147–48 (1968).

More Definitions of Mens rea

Mens rea means state of mind, as required to form intent to commit any civil or criminal offense. “Non-native” means any person who is not an enrolled member of a Federally-Recognized Indian Tribe.

Mens rea means, literally, a guilty mind. It is a cardinal principle of English Common Law that a person cannot be convicted and punished in a proceeding of a criminal nature unless it can shown that he had a guilty mind. This principle is self explanatory. A person should be punished for deliberate defiance of law, rather than something which he did not intentionally or something which happened accidently. Nevertheless, this principle is most misconceived. In certain offences, called “statutory offences”, it is argued that mens rea is not required. Taxation offences are statutory offences. Natural corollary should follow. In Gujarat Travancore7, the Supreme Court held that ‘mens rea’ is not an essential ingredient for imposing a penalty unless statute specifically

Mens rea means fault on the part of the accused and may take the form of either intention (dolus) or negligence (culpa);