The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 6: Mens Rea
Page 17: The “Mens Rea – O – Meter”
Average Joe looking pissed
AVERAGE JOE
God what a depressing discussion. No wonder that baby was so angry at the beginning.
The “Handy Dandy Mens Rea-O-Meter” thermometer, with markings from “Accidental” at the bottom up through “Negligent” and “Reckless” and “Knowing” to “Intentional” at the top.
Even so, now we have a useful SCALE of culpability, based on the mental state of the person what done it.
But that’s not all there is to it. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And we’ll get back into it next time!
You can read this entire chapter in its original single-page scroll on the comic’s old Tumblr site here.
Great primer. Should be required reading in all high school civics classes.
Where is the “Like” button…. oh wait, wrong situation.
How applicable are those five steps to all crimes? For example, is it possible to “recklessly” steal something?
Perhaps a situation where it’s ambiguous where you’re stealing something vs. picking up abandoned property? (E.g., a library is giving away a cart of its least-used books for free, and you don’t check to see if the book you’ve picked up off the ground says “Discard” on the spine.) Alternatively, a situation where you have permission to take something from a non-legitimate source (your host tells you to “help yourself” to anything in the kitchen, so you eat some of their roommate’s expensive imported chocolate).
So, where does non-premeditated killing rank? It could be either intentional or knowing, no?
It would depend I guess, if they didn’t plan to kill a person, but then in the moment took an action they KNEW would kill them specifically TO kill them, then thats still intentional?