MENSREA

Mens rea

Mens rea is Latin for "guilty mind". In criminal law, it is viewed as one of the necessary elements of some crimes. The standard common law test of criminal liability is usually expressed in the Latin phrase, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means "the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty". Thus, in jurisdictions with due process, there must be an actus reus, or "guilty act," accompanied by some level of mens rea to constitute the crime with which the defendant is charged . As a general rule, criminal liability does not attach to a person who merely acted with ...

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mens rea

Noun

  1. a guilty mind, a conscious knowing by the perpetrator that the act he/she committed was illicit


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: mens rea
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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