Essays on Malice Aforethought

Criminal Liability of Joe

Joe is liable for possession, supply, and permitting premises to be used for the supply of controlled drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The law provides that it is “unlawful for a person to have a controlled drug in his possession”. Joe is a user of illegal drugs. Any controlled drugs found on his person and place of residence renders him liable for possession. When Karla overdosed, Joe was in possession of the heroin that Karla injected on herself. It is also unlawful for any individual “to supply or offer to supply a controlled drug to another”. ...

Intention and knowledge of a crime cannot be of the same type of mens-rea. For example, murder and culpable homicide are intentional and knowledge based respectively. The intention based mens rea places mental element of murder foremost as an intention to cause death. At a lesser degree is an intention to cause a specific bodily injury which the offender knows will cause death of the victim. This is almost the same as the mental element for murder as the offender knowingly causes the bodily injury that it can cause death. As such, the offender is liable to be convicted for murder. Next ...

Describe Malice Aforethought and how we show/prove it. If they (the criminal) doesn't tell you their man endangering state of mind how can you prove it? Malice aforethought in common law and fourteenth century law in England had been associated with murder as an act of killing with “malice prepense”. Under common law, there had been no “degrees” murder. The term “malice aforethought” literally meant to indicate an intentional, preplanned, deliberate murder motivated by ill will (malice) toward the victim. Several centuries later, judges started defining “malice aforethought” to cover killings of any kind not only preplanned killing ( ...

INTRODUCTION

Criminal homicide is the act of ending another person’s life by the hand of another (Luckenbill, 1977). There are many different ways in which criminal homicide is defined in the American criminal justice system; different degrees of what constitutes homicide, as well as other mitigating factors, can help to determine the sentencing of an individual or individuals who take part in the act, whether voluntarily or not. This is meant to apply as individualistic a sentencing as possible on the particular situation, instead of making standardized choices for criminal homicide on the whole. All of this leads to an ...