{"id":588,"date":"2012-10-19T13:45:42","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T17:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=588"},"modified":"2023-08-12T19:44:52","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T23:44:52","slug":"6-not-a-defense-if-not-a-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=588","title":{"rendered":"6. Not a Defense If Not a Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-589\" title=\"Excuse06\" src=\"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Excuse06.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"700\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Excuse06.png 500w, https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Excuse06-214x300.png 214w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"bg-margin-for-link\"><input type='hidden' bg_collapse_expand='69e5f445878d34008683326' value='69e5f445878d34008683326'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-more-text-69e5f445878d34008683326' value='Transcript'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-less-text-69e5f445878d34008683326' value='Close Transcript'><div id='bg-showmore-hidden-69e5f445878d34008683326' ><br \/>The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law <br \/>Chapter 11: Excuse Me! <br \/>Excuse pg 6: Not a defense, because not a crime<\/p>\n<p>Samantha&#8217;s was a mistake of\u00a0<strong>fact.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some authorities say her mistake gives her a defense to the charge of booze theft. But they are\u00a0<strong>wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A defense is something that lets you get away with something that&#8217;s ordinarily a\u00a0<strong>crime.<\/strong> Mistake of fact, on the other hand, is only useful as evidence that you didn&#8217;t have the necessary mens rea\u2060\u2014in other words, that there was\u00a0<strong>no crime<\/strong> in the\u00a0<strong>first place.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So mistake of law is no defense, and mistake of fact isn&#8217;t really one\u00a0<strong>either.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Average Joe all flustered<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>AVERAGE JOE<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">GAH! It&#8217;s enough to make you crazy!<\/p>\n<p>Good idea. For the time being, anyway. So how about a little\u00a0<strong>TEMPORARY INSANITY?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Average Joe accepting a cup of tea from a teapot emitting sparks<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>AVERAGE JOE<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Well, maybe just a smidge.<\/p>\n<p><\/div><\/div><a id='bg-showmore-action-69e5f445878d34008683326' class='bg-showmore-plg-link  '  style=\" color:#9ca7a5;;\" href='#'>Transcript<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,38,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-law","category-defenses","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}