The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 6: Mens Rea
Page 13: Negligence
(There are some rare offenses where even accidents are punished, but we’ll get to that later.)
What about Jan and Dean?
Jan and Dean
Well, Jan didn’t expect that giving her baby adult-strength cough medicine would be fatal. But you’d have expected her to be more careful. Jan was NEGLIGENT.
Most of the time, negligence is the least culpable mens rea that can be punished—here perhaps as a “negligent homicide.”
(Though one might say she’s suffered enough already.)
