Guilty Mind Research Articles

Insanity Defence Under the Indian Criminal justice System

The "Insanity Defence" within the framework of the Indian Legal System serves as a protective measure for individuals accused of criminal offenses, especially when they lack the mental capacity to understand the nature of their actions or differentiate between right and wrong. This defence aligns with the legal principle “Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea,” which emphasizes that for an action to be deemed unlawful, it must be accompanied by a guilty mind. Consequently, punishing individuals who are not accountable for their actions would contravene fundamental human rights enshrined in the Constitution of India. To delve deeper into the concept of the insanity defence, it's essential to trace its origins and development within English law and its subsequent impact on Indian legal statutes. It's crucial to understand that insanity defence isn't merely a matter of suffering from a mental illness; rather, it requires a demonstration that the accused lacked the mental capacity to comprehend the consequences of their actions. Thus, the burden of proof lies with the accused, who must provide compelling evidence to establish their state of insanity, akin to the standard of “preponderance of the evidence” often seen in civil cases. This paper seeks to analyze the intricacies of insanity within the legal framework and how it has evolved into a potential loophole within the current judicial system.

The crime of goods fraud in the Jordanian penal code

The primary focus of this research study is the analysis of Article 433 of the Jordanian Penal Code, which criminalizes goods fraud as a means of providing criminal protection for consumers. A descriptive and analytical methodology is employed in this study, involving the review and analysis of legal texts, judicial precedents, and relevant legal jurisprudence. The distinction between the crime of goods fraud and other similar offenses is elucidated in this study. It is confirmed through the findings of this research that this crime comprises three essential elements: the presumed element as stipulated in the sales contract of goods, the material element rooted in the fraudulent act, and the mental element, often referred to as the "guilty mind," which assumes the form of a general criminal intent. It has also been established that individuals found guilty of this offense face penalties ranging from one month to one year of imprisonment, coupled with a fine ranging from five to fifty dinars, or one of these penalties. This criminal punishment encompasses attempted crimes as well. The study concludes that the scope of criminalization should not be confined solely to fraud within sales contracts, but rather should be expanded to encompass other types of contracts. Furthermore, it is recommended that restitution of the sold goods be mandated, and the return of money to the buyer be ensured.

Is Leaving God to Make the Choice an Answer to a Charge of Murder by Reckless Indifference to Human Life or Manslaughter? A Case Study of Queensland Criminal Law

The criminal law punishes persons who commit a guilty act with the requisite guilty mind. This article considers the criminal responsibility of parents and other persons who claim not to have possessed a guilty mind but instead left the choice to God as to whether a child survived the withdrawal of medication. The critical question is whether a jury can infer actual knowledge that death would probably result when a person consciously avoids considering the ramifications of withholding lifesaving medicine, such as insulin to a child with diabetes, and instead hands moral responsibility to God. This article explores whether murder under the circumstance of reckless indifference to human life, defined as an act committed with an awareness that death will probably arise from that act or omission, encompasses a defendant whose awareness is affected by a religious belief that his or her religious faith required God to make the decision of life or death. To avoid the need for the jury to infer actual knowledge from the objective circumstances of the case, the argument is made for an objective test for recklessness based on the natural and probable consequences test. The Crown’s options in framing the charges to be laid and the reasons why a particular choice may be made are considered, particularly in relation to manslaughter. In addition, this article examines the reach of criminal responsibility where the parents of the child are joined in prayer in their own home by members of the religious group to which the parents belong.

A Critique on Sentencing Policy with reference to Vehicular Homicide Cases in India

The importance of the topic is highlighted, from the very fact that culpability is set according to the level of blameworthiness on the part of accused. This blameworthiness is known as guilty mind or to be more precise a blameworthy state of mind. There are many degrees or kinds of mens rea, with their corresponding levels of culpability like Intention, knowledge, recklessness, negligence, etc. The punishment decreases as the mens rea fall the ladder. The importance of mens rea in criminal jurisprudence is again stressed by the maxim “Actus reus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea” which implies that “The act itself does not constitute guilt unless done with a guilty intent". Due to this elusiveness of Mens Rea, there is a disproportionate sentencing by the Courts which gives rise to injustice and violation of basic human rights and dignity of the victim. The paper shall decipher various issues pertaining to mens rea in Vehicular Homicide Cases and shall endeavour to come with suggestions to curb this menace.

Review of Stephen P. Garvey, Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)

Review of Stephen P. Garvey, Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)

Punishing Environmental Offenses Without Guilty Mind: Regulatory Framework and Judicial Responses

This paper explores the legal considerations and the scope of application of criminal liability without guilty mind in environmental offenses in Indonesia. Under the existing Environmental Law, liability without fault has been applicable exclusively in civil cases. This paper combines literature and induction research methods. The first method dives into the legal provision in Environmental Law containing the formulation of the offenses, while the induction method refers to the analysis on judicial decisions in the application of liability without fault. The findings of the study show that most of the prohibited offenses in environmental legislation deal with the malum prohibitum crime tied to the violation of a permit. The mental element is not explicitly stated in these offenses. Hence, the culpability of the defendant is presumed to be displayed in the evidence of the prohibited conduct. Waste or emissions discharged into the environmental media without authorisation is prohibited and pertaining the potential to harm the environment. These offenses are included as formal offenses by removing the element of culpability in the structure of the offense. It is also sufficient for the court to rule that the defendants have committed the prohibited conduct as the basis for imposing criminal sanction.

Mens rea, wrongdoing and digital advocacy in social media: Exploring quasi‐legal narratives during #deleteuber boycott

#Boycotts represent digital advocacy attempts in which users publicly punish an organization as a lurata (i.e., jury), which assesses the guilty intent, the mens rea (i.e., guilty mind), from a set of visible acts, the actus reus (i.e., wrongdoings). Yet, we know little about the quasi‐legal narratives advocated by users. To this aim, we developed a mixed method study of the #deleteuber boycott on Twitter. Our findings suggest that while users advocate both an Uber‐specific and a shared mens rea of Uber with sharing economy firms or the tech giants of Silicon Valley, the latter narrative is the most prominent one; its use depends on whether users are part of a lurata of influencers or not. These findings provide a contribution to studies on public affairs that focus on online activism, boycotts in social media and digital advocacy because they increase our understanding of the opaque legal motivations that provoke boycotters. Also, they highlight that social media blurs the boundaries between boycotts directed at the firm from the boycotts arising indirectly due to the shameful acts of the industry or peers.

Mens Rea and Narratives of Violence: The Guilty Mind in Twenty-First-Century American Literature

This article presents two twenty-first-century novels that deal with particularly charged and contemporary expressions of violence in the United States: Matthew Quick’s Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock and the threat of armed students in school, and John Updike’s Terrorist and the threat of Islamic extremism. High profile acts of violence of this kind in the United States leading up to and into the years following the turn of the millennium prompted significant concern surrounding the identification of would-be perpetrators, including those in the premeditating stage of their intended attacks.
 This article argues that stepping away from the violent act and focusing instead on the violent mind situates premeditation as an integral part of violence and its conceptualization. Further, interest in the internalized aspects of violence can be seen as a response to very real socio-cultural concerns in the United States. In order to achieve this analytical focus, the article adopts the legal concepts of mens rea (the guilty mind) and actus reus (the guilty act), interweaving them with literary criticism in order to suggest that novels can serve as Momusian windows into the premeditating stage of violence through immersion into the violent mind. In so doing, they contribute more robustly to broader understandings of violence in the United States as it evolves from concept to action.

‘Ten thousand times more malignant than her mate’: destabilizing gendered assumptions underlying the defences of provocation and loss of control through a reading of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

AbstractThis article explores how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein engages with notions relating to mens rea. It constructs a reading of the creature as Victor's double, and therefore a manifestation of his guilty mind. Utilizing interdisciplinary literary‐legal methods, the article employs the central relationship in Frankenstein as a means of illuminating and critiquing the ways in which criminal law reproduces and perpetuates gendered notions of behaviour in relation to what is deemed a justified emotional response in the partial defences of provocation and loss of control. It concludes that Frankenstein helps to expose these gaps in legal discourse and ultimately destabilizes binaries of gendered criminality.

Stephen P Garvey, Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds

Stephen P Garvey, <i>Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds</i>

Diminished culpability in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).

There is a biological basis for diminished criminal responsibility in offenders with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) just as there is in those with intellectual disability. Functional limitations affecting cognition in both neurodevelopmental conditions stem directly from structural brain damage at a gross and molecular level, which usually impairs executive functioning among other cognitive skills. Executive functioning, which includes reasoning and impulse control, is the only neural system in the brain that involves conscious thought. With respect to the law, impaired reasoning or rationality is an aspect of mens rea ("guilty mind"). When rationality is impaired by prenatal alcohol exposure, acts driven by strong emotion and urges can occur, which has obvious implications regarding criminal responsibility. The Atkins decision by the U.S. Supreme Court reflects the rationale that organically based brain dysfunction in executive skills reduces criminal culpability. We argue that people with FASD who have similar brain dysfunction likewise have reduced criminal responsibility.

Breaking Laws, Just and Unjust

Can a state punish citizens for breaking unjust laws? In his engaging defense of democratic political authority, Stephen P. Garvey answers affirmatively. Guilty Acts, Guilty Minds sets up a debate ...

Neuroscience and Normativity: How Knowledge of the Brain Offers a Deeper Understanding of Moral and Legal Responsibility

Neuroscience can relate to ethics and normative issues via the brain’s cognitive control network. This network accomplishes several executive processes, such as planning, task-switching, monitoring, and inhibiting. These processes allow us to increase the accuracy of our perceptions and our memory recall. They also allow us to plan much farther into the future, and with much more detail than any of our fellow mammals. These abilities also make us fitting subjects for responsibility claims. Their activity, or lack thereof, is at the heart of culpability. For instance, planning to kill someone is strong evidence of what the law calls men rea—a guilty mind. Claims about norms, or ethical “should” claims, express two-level propositions, directed at the behaving person at one level, and at that person’s mind and cognitive control network at another level. Thus, “People should stop themselves from hurting others,” is a claim about how people should behave and also a claim about how their cognitive control networks should behave—i.e., they should inhibit harmful behavior, or the intentions leading up to it. Planning is both an ability of the full person, and of that person’s mind. Neuroscience affirms the common notion, seen both in law and folk psychology, that what makes us guilty or culpable are certain events and states that exist in our minds. Overt behavior, including speech, is fallible evidence of these states and processes. Cases of negligence still involve the executive processes, but “negatively,” in that negligence results when certain types of executive activity fail to take place.

Decriminalization of Attempted Suicide in India

The Indian Penal Code (IPC) is the main document which governs all criminal acts and the punishments they ought to be charged with. The objective of enacting the IPC was to provide a general and exhaustive penal code for crime in India. However, there are several other penal statutes that govern various other offences in addition to the IPC. In animal law, a notable such statute is the Prevention of Cruelty Against Animals Act. In order to be held liable under the IPC, the accused must possess both mens rea (guilty mind) and actus reas (guilty act). The IPC extends to the whole of India. Punishments under the IPC can be extended both to offences committed within India as well as offences committed beyond, but which by law may be tried, within India. Attempted suicide is a serious problem requiring mental health interventions, but it continues to be treated as a criminal offence under the section 309 of Indian Penal Code. The article reviews the international legal perspective across various regions of the world, discusses the unintended consequences of section 309 IPC and highlights the need for decriminalization of attempted suicide in India. The Mental Health Care Bill, 2013, still under consideration in the Rajya Sabha (upper house), has proposed that attempted suicide should not be criminally prosecuted. Decriminalization of suicidal attempt will serve to cut down the undue stigma and avoid punishment in the aftermath of incident, and lead to a more accurate collection of suicide-related statistics. From a policy perspective, it will further emphasize the urgent need to develop a framework to deliver mental health services to all those who attempt suicide.

Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England, by Elizabeth Papp Kamali

Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England, by Elizabeth Papp Kamali

Get-Rich Quick scheme: Malaysian current legal development

PurposeIn Malaysia, Get-Rich-Quick scheme (GRQS) is one of the financial fraud activities prohibited under Malaysian law. The common facet of such schemes involves plans that promise unrealistic rates of returns, and this new scheme continues to proliferate every year as the list of illegal investment companies and websites are growing. Indeed, GRQS will remain proliferating as long as there are people who are easily lured by the promise that wealth can be generated with little skill, effort or time. This paper aims to explain the phenomenon of GRQS in light of the existing laws in Malaysia. This paper also highlights the current development of Australian law pertaining to GRQS for comparative purpose.Design/methodology/approachThis paper mainly relies on statutes as its primary sources of information. As such, this paper analyses the scope and provisions of the relevant laws that regulate GRQS and compare the existing GRQS provisions that are equivalent with Australian law.FindingsMalaysia has comprehensive laws to combat GRQS activities. However, these laws are far from perfection, and only with immediate amendments, GRQS problems can be resolved more effectively. One of the weaknesses of current Malaysian laws to tackle GRQS is the lack of more stringent punishment against the operators of GRQS as well as the participants of the scheme. A comparison with equivalent GRQS law in Australia demonstrates that Australian laws provide a wide range of punishment to the operators and prohibits participation in GRQS. More importantly, Australia regards the offense as a strict liability offense where the mens rea or guilty mind of the perpetrators is exempted. Indeed, numerous proceedings have been instituted in the Australian Court against the operators and participants of GRQS.Originality/valueThis paper analyses the scope of relevant laws in Malaysia to combat GRQS and examines the strengths and weaknesses of these laws. This paper also compares Malaysian law with equivalent GRQS-related laws available in Australia. This paper further suggests that Malaysia should regulate sterner punishment for operators and participants of the scheme and that the offense is categorized under a strict liability offense where the mens rea or guilty mind of the offender is exempted.

Elizabeth Papp Kamali. Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England.

E<scp>lizabeth</scp> P<scp>app</scp> K<scp>amali</scp>. <i>Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England</i>.

Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England. Elizabeth Papp Kamali. Studies in Legal History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xvi + 336 pp. $120.

Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England. Elizabeth Papp Kamali. Studies in Legal History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xvi + 336 pp. $120.

Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England. (Studies in Legal History.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv, 336; 10 black-and-white figures. $120. ISBN: 978-1-1084-9879-1.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsElizabeth Papp Kamali, Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England. (Studies in Legal History.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv, 336; 10 black-and-white figures. $120. ISBN: 978-1-1084-9879-1.Thomas J. McSweeneyThomas J. McSweeneyWilliam & Mary Law School Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 96, Number 1January 2021 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/712065 Views: 83Total views on this site Copyright 2021 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Elizabeth Papp Kamali. Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England. Studies in Legal History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 336. $120.00 (cloth).

Elizabeth Papp Kamali. Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England. Studies in Legal History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 336. $120.00 (cloth).