The legal significance of what a person intends to achieve depends on the area of the law in question. In contract law, for example, the intention of the parties to enter into a written contract is determined by the language of the contractual document. Although the concept of mens rea is generally accepted, problems arise in its application in some cases. Some crimes require a very high level of intent, while others require much less. Theft, for example, requires the defendant to intentionally take property that he knows is not entitled to permanently deprive the rightful owner of the property. On the other hand, negligent homicide presupposes that the defendant causes the death of another negligently. In many situations in the United States, a person is presumed to have acted intentionally when the definitions of purpose or knowledge are met. In other situations (particularly with respect to certain intentional crimes whose definition is “intentional”), intent may be considered to relate solely to the intended purpose. Probably the most influential legal definitions of purpose and knowledge come from the definitions of the mens rea model criminal code. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in elonis v. United States that negligence was not sufficient to demonstrate intent, but did not rule on the issue of recklessness.
Sometimes a forensic psychiatric examination can be helpful in determining the presence or absence of mens rea in crimes that require some intent. [2] Intent is also sometimes at the heart of contracts when a court establishes the existence of a contract or interprets the term or conditions of a contract. In these situations, the courts determine the objective intent of the parties by examining the language used in the contract when it was concluded; The subjective or secret intent of the parties is ignored. If the wording of the contract is ambiguous, the parol rule of evidence allows courts to take extrinsic evidence into account when determining the intention of the parties. For example, A, a jealous woman, discovers that her husband is having a sexual affair with B. Since she only wants to drive B out of the neighborhood, she goes to B`s house one night, pours gasoline and sets fire to the front door. B died in the resulting fire. A is shocked and horrified.
It didn`t occur to him that B could be physically in danger, and there was no conscious plan in his head to hurt B when the fire started. But if A`s behavior is analyzed, B`s death must be intentional. If A really wanted to avoid any possibility of injury to B, she wouldn`t have set it on fire. Or, if it wasn`t an option to verbally warn B to leave, she would have had to wait until B was seen to leave the house before lighting the fire. As it stood, she waited until the night when it was more likely that B would be at home and fewer people would be there to set off the alarm. While the intention would be less if A had set fire to the house during the day after ringing the doorbell to check if no one was at home, and then immediately called the fire department to report the fire. Holloway was charged and convicted of committing the federal crime of carjacking “with intent to cause death or serious bodily harm.” Holloway admitted to abducting at gunpoint, but argued that he only intended to use his weapon “when one of the drivers gave him a hard time.” The unconditional intention was to make Carjack without harming the driver. The conditional intention was to kidnap the driver and cause him harm if he became uncooperative.
A number of words represent nuances of intent in criminal laws around the world. The mental element or mens rea of murder, for example, is traditionally expressed as malevolence, and interpretations of malevolence, “malicious” and “intentional” vary between pure intent and recklessness or negligence, depending on the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed and the seriousness of the crime. The deliberate element of a crime, such as the intention to kill, can exist without malicious motive or even with a benevolent motive, as in the case of euthanasia. [1] In criminal law, the concept of criminal intent has been mentioned mens rea, which refers to a criminal or illegal purpose. If a person innocently causes harm, then his mens rea is absent and should not be prosecuted according to this concept. In tort law, intent plays a key role in determining the civil liability of persons who commit damage. Intentional tort is any intentional violation or infringement of someone else`s property, property rights, human rights or personal freedoms that causes harm without cause or excuse. In tort, a person is deemed to have an intention to suffer the consequences of an act — whether or not he or she has the actual intention of those consequences — if he or she is essentially certain that those consequences will occur. In California, it is generally believed that the defendant intended to perform an act he committed. However, in the case of offences requiring a certain intention, that intention must be proved beyond any doubt.
For example, in a conviction for attempted murder that requires proof of a particular intent to kill, a prosecutor cannot rely on the fact that the accused committed the act of murder to presume that the defendant acted with intent to kill. The accused, for example, may have acted in self-defence and thus denied the necessary intent, because the murder was committed out of protection and not out of a desire to take the lives of the victims. In administrative law, the courts also have the power to determine the intention of the legislature for the purposes of legal interpretation. In doing so, the courts are primarily guided by the language of the law as understood in the codified state. It should be noted that courts sometimes also consider the omission of certain formulations as an indication of the intention of the legislature. The courts also take into account the circumstances in which the law was enacted, its purpose and its history. Intention is a mental attitude with which an individual acts, and therefore it usually cannot be directly proven, but must be derived from the surrounding facts and circumstances. Intention refers only to the state of mind with which the action is made or omitted.
It is different from the motive that pushes a person to act or not to act. Suppose Billy calls Amy by names and Amy throws a snowball at her. Amy`s intention is to hit Billy with a snowball. Their motive might be to stop Billy`s taunts. A person intends to have a consequence if he or she (1) anticipates that it will happen if his or her series of acts or omissions continues, and (2) wants it to happen. The most serious level of guilt that justifies the most severe levels of punishment is achieved when these two components are actually present in the mind of the accused (a “subjective” test). A person who plans and executes a crime is rightly or wrongly considered a more serious danger to the public than a person who acts spontaneously (perhaps because they are less likely to be caught), whether by the sudden occasion of stealing or out of anger to hurt someone. But the intention may also come from a common law perspective.
The criminal law has sought to clarify the intent requirement by creating the terms “specific intent” and “general intent.” Specific intent refers to a particular state of mind that aims to carry out the very action that the law prohibits – for example, a specific intention to commit rape. Sometimes it means the intention to do something beyond what is done, such as assault with intent to commit rape. The Crown must prove that the defendant intentionally or knowingly committed the offence in question. Direct intent: A person has a direct intention if he intends to have some consequence of his action. The criminal law waives the intent requirement in many property offences. Under the common law, prosecutors had to prove that the defendant intended to steal or destroy property. Around 1900, many laws eliminated the “intent to cheat” requirement for property crimes. Passing a bad cheque, getting a property under false pretenses, selling a mortgage property and embezzling funds while holding public office no longer required criminal intent. In some States, a distinction is made between a crime with a fundamental intention (sometimes called “general”) and a crime with a concrete intention. The political problem for those who run the criminal justice system is that when planning their actions, people may be aware of many likely and possible consequences. Thus, the decision to move forward with the current plan means that all foreseeable consequences are foreseen to some extent, that is, within the framework and not against the scope of each person`s intent. General intent refers to the intention to do what the law prohibits.
It is not necessary for the prosecution to prove that the defendant intended to suffer the damage or the exact result that occurred. Thus, in most states, an accused who kills a person with a firearm while drunk will be guilty of second-degree murder to the extent that the defendant does not know he has a firearm. The law will conclude that the accused had the general intention to kill. In Holloway v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the word “intent” in federal law can mean either “unconditional intent,” “conditional intent,” or both, depending on the context and purpose of Congress. [5] Basic intentional offences include assault and battery, conversion of property, false arrest, false detention, fraud, intentional infliction of emotional stress, invasion of privacy and trespassing. It is usually not necessary to use illegal or illegal means to achieve the negative result, provided that the illegal behavior is intentional and is not accompanied by an apology or justification.
Strange intent: The person has an oblique intent if the event is a natural consequence of a voluntary act and foresees it as such. The definition of “natural consequence” was replaced in R v. Woollin by the criterion “practically safe”.
