LAW1114 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Actus Reus, United Grand Lodge Of England, Gross Negligence
TOPIC 4: ELEMENTS OF A CRIME
Introduction and traditional classification of offences
ACTUS NON FACIT REUM NISI MENS SIT REA
Waller & Williams [1.23]: Subjective blameworthiness
• Knowledge and/or intention of wrongfulness
• Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea: ‘As a vicious will without a vicious act is no civil crime, so on the
other hand, and unwarrantable act without a vicious will is not crime at all’ (4 Bl Comm 21 (Blackstone))
o Justifies traditional defences against criminal charges (e.g. infancy, duress, coercion, insanity, mental
impairment, etc.)
• Theory of human action: A human act is muscular contraction resulting from the operation of the mind or
will (Austinian Doctrine)
o Distinguished from surrounding circumstances (including past facts) and its consequences
o ‘Blameworthiness’ rests on a specific ‘state of mind’ prompting the muscular contraction in question
▪ ‘Recklessness’: Appreciation of existing circumstances and foresight of consequences must be
appreciated in order to satisfy the MR of the willed act
▪ ‘Intention’: Desire to produce the consequences from the willed act
• Negligence: Failure to comply with the standard of care that a reasonable person engaging in the specific
activity would adopt (Nydam v R)
o ‘Negligence, Mens Rea and Criminal Responsibility’ (Professor Hart): ‘When harm has resulted from
someone’s negligence, if we say that person that he has acted negligently we are not thereby merely
describing the frame of mind in which he acted…[W]e are referring to the fact that the agent has
failed to comply with a standard of conduct with which any ordinary man could and would have
complied: a standard requiring him to take precautions against harm’
o Gross negligence: ‘if the precautions to be taken against harm are very simple, such as persons who
are but poorly endowed with physical and mental capacities can easily take’ (Professor Hart)
• Strict liability offences: ‘Regulatory offences’ that provide an example of one of the ways un which the
law has shaped our perceptions of moral and immoral behaviour
o Lacks moral blameworthiness
• Fitzjames Stephen’s view: Each crime has its own particular MR, some parts of which may be expressed
in words of either a statutory provision or of received common law definition and some parts of which are
always understood to be implied (e.g. age that one is capable of committing a crime)
Eteral/phsical eleets Actus ‘eus
VOLUNTARINESS
Ugle v R (2002) 211 CLR 171
• Parties: Ugle (appellant); R (respondent)
• Jurisdiction: High Court of Australia
• Material facts:
o The victim died from a knife wound to the chest, and the appellant held the said knife at the time of the
incident.
o The appellant claimed that the deceased had been attacking him with a cricket bat, and he had been
trying to fend off the deceased at the time, thereby acting in self-defence.
o The trial judge had not give a jury direction regarding unwilled acts, and the appellant was found
guilty.
o The appellant appealed unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court of WA.
• Legal issue: Whether the insertion of the knife was a voluntary act (an act willed by the appellant) and
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