Speaker A
welcome back everyone to criminal law in this lesson we're going to talk about the elements of a crime and this is essentially outlining the next of our major topics for criminal law which are essentially the elements for a crime the
Introduction to criminal law's elements of a crime: actus reus (guilty act) and mens rea (guilty mind), causation, omissions, strict liability, and valid defenses, framing how criminal liability is es
Key Takeaways
- Criminal liability requires both a guilty act and a guilty mind, absent a valid defense.
- Strict liability offenses are an exception where mens rea is largely not required.
- Elements are identified differently for statutory offenses versus common law offenses.
- Defenses, including partial defenses, must always be considered in establishing liability.
What the video covers
- The lesson introduces the elements of a crime as the next major topic in the criminal law series.
- Criminal liability is built from the actus reus (guilty act) plus mens rea (guilty mind), minus any valid defense.
- Subsidiary topics include causation, omissions as a basis for liability, and strict liability offenses where mens rea is not required.
- The prosecution, often under the Crown Prosecution Service, must prove the elements and that no valid defense applies.
- Partial defenses may reduce liability, such as murder being reduced to manslaughter.
- Statutory offenses like section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act can be broken into component parts by reading the text.
- Common law offenses require deriving elements from judge-made law but are still analyzable.
- Actus reus generally refers to the physical wrongful conduct, such as killing in murder or appropriation in theft.
- The Latin maxim actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea means an act is not guilty unless the mind is guilty.
- Defenses will be covered after the offenses at the end of the series, and each crime will be examined through its constituent elements.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to the Elements of a Crime
- 00:45Scope of Criminal Liability Topics
- 02:16Prosecution and Absence of Defenses
- 04:00Dividing Offenses into Component Elements
- 04:28Actus Reus and Mens Rea Explained
- 05:11Actus Reus as the Guilty Act
- 06:47Mens Rea and the Guilty Mind
- 08:34Constructing Criminal Liability
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
different component parts that are required to show Criminal liability now this isn't just the two main component parts the sort of the sort of equation for criminal liability which for those who don't already know we're talking about the actus Reyes of an
Speaker A
offense and then the men's rare of an offense but also all of the more subsidiary details that exist in this particular vein as well so this involves also talking about causation this involves talking about emissions as a way of giving rise to criminal liability
Speaker A
it is also a way of talking about things relating to strict liability offenses where men's rare is not necessarily a required component feature so that's what we're going to cover when we talk about this whole General topic on the components of criminal liability
Speaker A
we will explain the process by which an individual is found guilty or not guilty of a particular of an offense as well during this process and essentially just talk about how we find Criminal liability now we're going to do so with
Speaker A
reference to a variety of different crimes so for example in showing emissions or showing strict liability or mendrea or actress Reyes there are various different crimes that we can examine but we're going to try and limit our understanding of the specifics of
Speaker A
those crimes to when we actually get on to looking at them in the future so if for example we cover a case in this series on on murder or sexual offenses we're going to try and look at the the
Speaker A
component elements of that case which exemplifies for example the men's Raya or exemplifies the idea of an emission or causation rather than the specific offense itself which of course we will get to when we look at those offenses in
Speaker A
more detail as we go on through this series when we find Criminal liability we find it through the circumstances when the prosecution often done under the auspices of the crown prosecution service can show that a def that the
Speaker A
defendant satisfies the elements of uh criminal liability and that in addition to this there are no valid defenses to the conduct which was committed so one of the things that people fail to recognize in some regard is that when we
Speaker A
find Criminal liability we also have to take into account any kind of valid defense so that has to also be shown as well and so it means that there has to be the presence of the various elements of
Speaker A
criminal liability for the most part we will get through strict liability in the future and that the absence of a valid defense is also present there is also no valid defense whether this is a defense which is full or whether this is a
Speaker A
defense which is partial so some partial offenses may not necessarily absolve criminal liability in its entirety but may reduce criminal liability from say murder to manslaughter for example so we can divide criminal liability into its component elements and then we can
Speaker A
minus the valid defense we will get to defenses after we've covered the offenses at the end of this series of lessons so the question is what are the elements of criminal liability well this is a question that really
Speaker A
depends on the particular crime that we are talking about so when we go on to explore the nature of various offenses at various crimes we'll be able to divide them into their constituent parts and really find where criminal liability
Speaker A
arises this is really easy for say statutory offenses so when we look at for example sections one of the of the sexual offenses act we can clearly just read it down and we can just highlight what are the different individual component parts
Speaker A
of criminal liability for section one of the sexual offenses act it's a little bit more difficult when we are talking about common law offenses because of course this is deriving out of the various principles of Judge made law but
Speaker A
it's not impossible and it's not too much it's not that difficult to to establish so when we look at criminal liability the elements of criminal liability to these specific crimes will often fall into one of two main categories they
Speaker A
will Define they'll be defined by either the actors Reyes of an offense or the men's rare of an offense now these are the arguably the two most important principles that you should really understand before even examining any other element of criminal law so that's
Speaker A
why we're spending so much time examining them in this series beginning first then the actus Reyes the the phrase itself if we were to just translate it simply means guilty act and so while this is true for the most part
Speaker A
it doesn't mean necessarily that an act is required to fulfill an actress Reyes for an offense we will get to omissions in the future um but for now the idea of an actress Reyes is the guilty act essentially
Speaker A
doing the thing that record that that leads to criminal liability so if it is uh murder then it is doing the murdering doing the actual physical act itself that is the guilty act um again when we say guilty act that
Speaker A
infers or implies that may have to be a positive act a thing that you have to do but criminal liability can also arise in certain certain circumstances out of an emission I.E failing to do a particular thing as well so we'll get to that in
Speaker A
the future but fundamentally the actors Reyes of a crime generally refer us to the thing that is done where criminal liability is incurred so if we're talking about theft it is the the appropriation the the appropriation of of a particular piece of property if it
Speaker A
is like I've said murder it is the sort of homicide element the the the killing of an individual uh ending a person's life um in conjunction with the actress Reyes we also have to think about the idea of
Speaker A
men's rare men's rare refers to the idea of a guilty mind and it comes out of the Latin maxim of actus non-facet real Nissi men's which essentially tells us that um it means that essentially uh the the the the fact is not guilty unless
Speaker A
the mind is guilty so there has to be a a correspondence of actus Reyes and men's rare for a particular offense to uh give rise for us to give rise to criminal liability for example so it's not just enough necessarily in in some
Speaker A
circumstances is to just have done a guilty act one has to also do so with a guilty mind it is also never enough to just have a guilty mind you cannot be convicted of an offense because you had
Speaker A
a guilty mind and you didn't actually perform the offense the performance of the offense in conjunction with the men's rare is where criminal liability arises in the majority of circumstances like I said I'm going to put a little
Speaker A
asterisk there because of course you also have strict liability offenses as well which take mens Reya um very take very little in um they take they're generally not that bothered about the men's rare in Street liability offenses and we'll get to that in the
Speaker A
future so like I said we'll get to this because there is not necessarily the requirement of a prerequisite menswear in every single case foreign but generally speaking if we were to then construct criminal liability uh we can take all of these
Speaker A
factors into account and we can construct criminal liability as the actus Reyes plus this idea of the men's rare the guilty act plus the guilty mind minus a valid defense okay so we're taking away any idea of a valid defense
Speaker A
there is no valid because if there was a valid defense and that defense was full then the individual will be found not guilty and there wouldn't be criminal liability so it is the the guilty act plus the guilty mind minus the valid
Speaker A
defense all of which gives rise to criminal liability and this is the general structure in which we're going to look at the construction of the various crimes that we are going to examine so when we look at murder for
Speaker A
example we're going to do so by looking first at the actus Reyes what are the requirements there and then the men's Raya the correspondence of the two there are some cases that are quite interesting in that regard and then we'll talk about uh valid
Speaker A
defenses and then also think about how that gives rise to criminal liability the same with theft the same with sexual offenses the same with dishonesty offenses as well and non-fatal offenses all of which are gonna um can be
Speaker A
constructed on the basis of this actus Reyes plus this men's right this guilty act plus the guilty mind but for now and for the next lesson we're gonna Begin by talking about actus Reyes in its general form in its generality uh by talking
Speaker A
about what it actually means to have a guilty act um talk about the distinction between an act and an Omission talk about the idea of criminal conduct talk about the causation of the conduct with uh with reference to the liability that arises
Speaker A
before we then move on to talking about men's rare and strict liability etc etc
Topics:criminal lawactus reusmens reaelements of a crimestrict liabilitycausationomissionscriminal liabilityvalid defensesmanslaughter
