Philosophy 2080 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Bubble Car, Rape Fantasy, Business Guy
30 Jan 2018
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These next few cases are some of the most difficult in the text. Even though they are complex, they revolve around the same principle issue: the state of mind of the accused and whether the trier of fact is required to find a subjective intention on the part of the accused. Consider, it is true that we can never really know with absolute certainty what goes on in the accused person"s mind. But the trier of fact must still decide this issue. If the accused can convince the trier of fact he is so stupid he did not realize what he was doing, then he must be acquitted. Remember in negligence the defendant could not argue that he just didn"t know any better. In negligence, the defendant"s ignorance as to the bad consequences of his actions is not relevant to the issue to be decided: i. e. would a reasonable person have known this would be the result.
