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In criminal law, mens rea (/ ˈ m ɛ n z ˈ r eɪ ə /; Law Latin for "guilty mind" [1]) is the mental state of a defendant who is accused of committing a crime. In common law jurisdictions, most crimes require proof both of mens rea and actus reus ("guilty act") before the defendant can be found guilty.
In 11 others, proof of some culpable mental state was an element of capital murder. In 13 states, aggravating circumstances above and beyond the fact of the murder itself were required before imposing the death penalty. This left eight states—out of 36—allowed the death penalty for merely participating in a felony in which a murder was ...
Mens rea refers to the crime's mental elements of the defendant's intent. This is a necessary element—that is, the criminal act must be voluntary or purposeful. Mens rea is the mental intention (mental fault), or the defendant's state of mind at the time of the offense, sometimes called the guilty mind. It stems from the ancient maxim of ...
In criminal law, culpability, or being culpable, is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action and inaction. It has been noted that the word, culpability, "ordinarily has normative force, for in nonlegal English, a person is culpable only if he is justly to blame for his ...
So, as in State of North Carolina v Vernon Jay Raley 155 NC App 222 (01-1004), [2] if a citizen intentionally utters a profanity at the police, the charges would be preferred under N.C.G.S. §14-288.4 which defines "disorderly conduct" as: a public disturbance intentionally caused by a person who:
The phrase mens rea is typically translated as "guilty mind" and describes the expected mental state of an accused. General intent is an awareness of factors constituting the crime, including attendant circumstances. The criminal must be aware of committing an illegal act and that attendant circumstances are likely to occur. The requisite ...
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Thus, a person suffering from somnambulism, a fugue, a metabolic disorder, epilepsy, or other convulsive or reflexive disorder, [18] who kills another, steals another's property, or engages in other facially criminal conduct, may not have committed an actus reus, for such conduct may have been elicited unconsciously, and "one who engages in ...