The mental element

Although most legal systems recognize the importance of the guilty mind, or mens rea, the statutes have not always spelled out exactly what is meant by this concept. The Model Penal Code has attempted to clarify the concept by reducing the variety of mental states to four. Guilt is attributed to a person who acts “purposely,” “knowingly,” “recklessly,” or, more rarely, “negligently.” Broadly speaking, these terms correspond to those used in Anglo-American courts and continental European legal theory. Singly or in combination, they appear largely adequate to deal with most of the common mens rea problems. They have been adopted literally or in substance by a majority of U.S. states and clarify and rationalize a major element in the substantive law of crimes. Under the Model Penal Code and in most states, most crimes require a showing of “purposely,” “knowingly,” or “recklessly.” Negligent conduct will support a conviction only when the definition of the crime in question includes it.

Liability without mens rea

Some penal offenses do not require the demonstration of culpable mind on the part of the accused. These traditionally include statutory rape, in which knowledge that the child is below the age of consent is not necessary to liability. There is also a large class of “public welfare offenses,” involving such things as economic regulations or laws concerning public health and safety. The rationale for eliminating the mens rea requirement in such offenses is that to require the prosecution to establish the defendant’s intent, or even negligence, would render such regulatory legislation largely ineffective and unenforceable. Such cases are known in Anglo-American law as strict liability offenses, and in French law as infractions purement matérielles. In German law they are excluded because the requirement of mens rea is considered a constitutional principle.

There has been considerable criticism of statutes that create liability without actual moral fault. To expose citizens to the condemnation of a criminal conviction without a showing of moral culpability raises issues of justice. In many instances the objectives of such legislation can more effectively be achieved by civil sanctions, as, for example, suits for damages, injunctions, and the revocation of licenses.

Ignorance and mistake

In most countries the law recognizes that a person who acts in ignorance of the facts of his action should not be held criminally responsible. Thus, one who takes and carries away the goods of another person, believing them to be his own, does not commit larceny, for he lacks the intent to steal. Ignorance of the law, on the other hand, is generally held not to excuse the actor; it is no defense that he was unaware that his conduct was forbidden by criminal law. This doctrine is supported by the proposition that criminal acts may be recognized as harmful and immoral by any reasonable adult.

The matter is not so clear, however, when the conduct is not obviously dangerous or immoral. A substantial body of opinion would permit mistakes of law to be asserted in defense of criminal charges in such cases, particularly when the defendant has in good faith made reasonable efforts to discover what the law is. In West Germany the Federal Court of Justice in 1952 adopted the proposition that if a person engages in criminal conduct but is unaware of its criminality, that person cannot be fully charged with a criminal offense; this has since been incorporated as rule in the German criminal code. Law and practice in Switzerland are quite similar. In Austria mistake of law is a legal defense. In the U.S. the Model Penal Code would allow a defense of mistake of law, but this would rarely include a mistake such as the existence or meaning of the law defining the crime itself.

Responsibility

It is universally agreed that in appropriate cases persons suffering from serious mental disorders should be relieved of the consequences of their criminal conduct. A great deal of controversy has arisen, however, as to the appropriate legal tests of responsibility. Most legal definitions of mental disorder are not based on modern concepts of medical science, and psychiatrists accordingly find it difficult to make their knowledge relevant to the requirements of the court.

Various attempts have been made to formulate a new legal test of responsibility. The Model Penal Code endeavoured to meet the manifold difficulties of this problem by requiring that the defendant be deprived of “substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law” as a result of mental disease or defect. This resembles the Soviet formulation of 1958, which required a mental disease as the medical condition and incapacity to appreciate or control as the psychological condition resulting from it. The same may be said of the German law, although the latter includes in mental illness such disorders as psychopathy and neurosis in addition to psychoses and provides for various gradations of diminished responsibility. Several U.S. jurisdictions, including federal law, have abandoned the volitional prong of the insanity test and returned to the ancient English rule laid down in M’Naghten’s Case (1843) 8 Eng. Rep. 718, 722. According to that case, an insane person is excused only if he did not know the nature and quality of his act or could not tell right from wrong. The English Homicide Act of 1957 also recognizes diminished responsibility, though to less effect. The act provides that a person who kills another shall not be guilty of murder “if he was suffering from such abnormality of mind…as substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts or omissions in doing or being a party to the killing.” The primary effect of this provision is to reduce an offense of murder to one of manslaughter.

Intoxication is usually not treated as mental incapacity. Soviet law was especially harsh; it held that the mental-disease defense was not applicable to persons who committed a crime while drunk and that drunkenness might even be an aggravating circumstance. American law is similar. In German law, on the other hand, intoxication like any other mental defect is acceptable as a defense in criminal cases.