mens rea and the relevance of mens rea in statutory offences

 

MENS REA AND THE RELEVANCE OF MENS REA IN STATUTORY OFFENCES.

It is one of the principles of the English criminal law that a crime is not committed if the mind of the person doing the act in question be innocent. It is said that actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea ( the intent and act must both concur to constitute the crime). Although prima facie and as a general rule there must be a mind at fault before there can be a crime, it is not an inflexible rule, and a statute may relate to such a subject matter and may be so framed as to make an act criminal whether there has been any intention to break the law or otherwise to do wrong or not.

The full definition of every crime contains expressly or by implication a proposition as to the state of mind. Therefore, if the mental element of any conduct alleged to be a crime is proved to have been absent in any given case, the crime so defined is not committed, or again if a crime is fully defined, nothing amounts to that crime which does not satisfy that definition.

It therefore, appears that the above maxim has not so wide an application as it is sometimes considered to have. It has undergone a modification owing to the greater precision of modern statutes. It is impossible to apply it generally to all statutes, and the substance of all the reported cases is that it is necessary to look at the object of each act that is under consideration to see whether and how far knowledge is of the essence of the offence created. Crimes ate at the present day much more accurately defined by statutes or otherwise than they formerly were.

But Sherras V De Rutzen seems very like an emphatic re – assertion of the doctrine that mens rea is an essential ingredient of every offence except in three cases: [1] Cases not criminal in any real sense but which in the public interest are prohibited under a penalty, eg., Revenue acts [2] public nuisance [3] Cases criminal in form but which are really only a summary mode of enforcing a civil right.

The maxim actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea has, however, no application to the offences under the penal code in its purely technical sense because the definitions of various offences contain expressly propositions as to the state of mind of the accused. The definitions state whether the act must have been done ‘intentionally’ ’voluntarily’ ’knowingly’ ‘dishonestly’ or ‘fraudulently or the like. Every ingredient of the offence is stated in the definitions. So mens rea will mean one thing or another according to the particular offence. The guilty mind may thus be a fraudulent mind, or a dishonest mind, or a negligent or rash mind. Every offence under the code virtually imports the idea of criminal intent or mens rea in some form or other. If, in any case, the Indian legislature has omitted to prescribe a particular mental condition, the presumption is that the omission is intentional. In such a case the doctrine of mens rea is not applicable.

Only limited and exceptional class of offences can be committed without a guilty mind. The court should always bear in mind that unless the statute, either clearly or by necessary implication, rules out mens rea as a constituent part of a crime, an accused should not be found guilty of an offence under the criminal law unless he has got a guilty mind. Absolute liability is not to be lightly presumed but has to be clearly established.