Introduction
Mens Rea as an element of criminal responsibility is an act undertaken with a guilty mind, a guilty or illegal purpose, and/or the person has a criminal intent. The subject displays a guilty knowledge and willfulness of the act. A core principle of criminal law is that a crime contains both a physical and a mental element. Mens rea, a person's understanding that his or her conduct is criminal, is the mental element. On the other hand, actus reus, the actual act, is the physical undertaking.
Differences Between Tort Law and Criminal law
In tort law, the concept of an ‘attempted tort’ does not exist, nor do legal proceedings occur for near misses in accident cases. …show more content…
This also contains economic implications by providing appropriate incentives for deterring wrongful acts. The lower penalty for the attempt may persuade the criminal to change his mind about going through with to attempt the final end result. If the penalties were the same for both the planning, attempt and successful completion, then the criminal would not have an incentive to have second thoughts about going through with the crime. The indented increasing penalties by severity shoes the more risk the criminal faces if he or she continues on the road to complete a crime. He or she has an economic and penalty motivation to halt their actions at the earliest possible stage to receive a lower punishment.
In a typical tort law case, liability is not dependent on whether the offender intended to cause an accident. However, this does exist in criminal law. The mindset of the offender in tort law has only minor significance. The state of mind of the offender only comes into play if it can be proved that he or she intended to commit the tort, or their behavior was so reckless that it amounted to a wilful intention to cause