Kinayah Morain Mc Intosh

Criminal Law- Assignment 2

Men's rea is a Latin phrase for the mental aspect or state of mind required to establish
criminal responsibility. It is a necessary component of many criminal offenses that need proof of
the accused's guilty thought or desire to commit the act. The nature of men's rea varies depending
on the offense, but it usually entails some element of intent, knowledge, recklessness, or
negligence. For example, to be guilty of murder, a person must have acted with the knowledge
that their acts would almost certainly end in death. To be negligent, however, a person must have
acted in a careless or reckless manner that caused harm to another person. It also ensures that
people are not convicted of crimes when they lack the appropriate mental condition to commit
them. It aids in distinguishing between intentional and unintentional conduct and enables the
criminal justice system to impose different levels of punishment based on the severity of the
offender's mental condition.

The question of motive was questioned in the case of R v. Woollin [1999] UKHL 45 in
cases involving murder in which the accused had indirectly caused the victim's death through
their behavior. The House of Lords, the highest court in the United Kingdom at the time,
addressed the concept of purpose in murder trials. The court concluded that if a person's conduct
is certain or highly likely to result in each consequence, that person can be presumed to have
intended to bring about that event. The defendant in this case tossed his three-month-old child
onto a hard surface, causing significant brain trauma and death. The accused claimed he had not
planned it. He had not intended to kill his son, but simply to terrify or hurt him. The Court of
Lords rejected this claim and decided that the defendant might be found guilty of murder if the
jury found that he had anticipated the action's almost likely or highly probable result—namely,
that tossing the infant would result in his severe injury or death. To establish the idea that the
virtual certainty or highly probable consequence of action might be taken as evidence of the
accused's intention, the case of R v. Woollin sought to define the legal definition of intention in
murder cases.
 The question of criminal law's concept of recklessness was raised in the case of R v. G
[2003] UKHL 50. In this instance, the jury was instructed to determine whether the defendant
behaved recklessly rather than with the purpose to cause severe bodily harm (GBH). When the
defendant tossed his six-month-old son onto a sofa, he severely fractured his boy's skull. In
contrast to the prosecution's contention that the defendant intended to gravely harm his son, the
defense contended that the defendant behaved carelessly rather than intentionally. According to
the House of Lords, the defendant did not intentionally cause GBH, but rather acted recklessly.

According to the court, the threshold for recklessness is whether they had malicious intentions;
the defendant had anticipated the risk of injuring someone else and chose to take that risk. In this
case, the defendant pushed his son onto the sofa while being aware of the risk of harm and
deciding to accept it. The court decided that the defendant was careless and severely damaged his
son.

Depending on the circumstances, negligence can be both objective and subjective. A case of
objective negligence occurs when a reasonable person in the same scenario would have acted
differently. under other terms, it is a failure to fulfill the reasonable person's standard of care
under similar circumstances. A driver who runs a red light and causes an accident, for example,
is objectively negligent since a reasonable person would not have done so. Subjective
negligence, on the other hand, relates to situations in which the individual did not mean to create
harm but nevertheless caused injury to others. In this scenario, the emphasis is on the individual's
mental condition rather than their acts alone. For example, if a doctor provides a prescription to a
patient that they knew or should have known was hazardous, this could be called subjectively
negligent because the doctor did not want to damage the patient, but their actions did.