Actus reus meaning

Cobban and another v Director of Public Prosecutions [2024] EWHC 1908 (Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? A clear separation is drawn between holders of public office (police officers exchanging messages about policing matters) and private individuals who might be prosecuted under section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003 on the basis of consensual private communications’ content Where Convention rights are engaged, a proportionality assessment is required, in line with the approach in Casserly [2024] EWCA Crim 25; 1 Cr App 18 The appellants maintained that, unless R v Collins [2006] UKHL 40; [2007] 1 WLR (HL) is restricted to its own facts, the law would capture consensual sharing of indecent material between private persons. Lord Brown had highlighted this concern at [27] in Collins, leaving it open. The higher court sided with the DPP: officers who, contrary to professional standards, traded abhorrent private messages about their policing duties could not plausibly assert a reasonable expectation of privacy. The...

Intention Intention denotes the result the defendant seeks. Offences are often categorised as ones of basic intent or specific intent. The Court of Appeal has labelled this division elusive. Even so, the Court offered guidance on specific intent: crimes of specific intent require proof of purpose or consequence, and include, though are not limited to, cases where the objective extends beyond the actus reus, sometimes called ulterior intent. The Court also endorsed the analysis that a line can be drawn between (i) intention considered in light of the actor’s purposes and (ii) intention viewed apart from those purposes. In some instances a general intent accompanying the act is all that is needed to constitute the offence; in others, in addition to that general intent, there must be a specific intent linked to the purpose for which the act is done. Put plainly, specific intent offences require an intention to secure something beyond the act itself, whereas basic intent offences require only an intention to carry out...

Strict liability It applies to offences where the prosecution is not obliged to prove mens rea for one or more components of the crime. What the defendant knew, believed, or intended is typically of no significance. Liability may therefore be fixed by the performance of the act, whatever the state of mind. This stands in tension with the presumption that criminal liability requires proof of both actus reus and mens rea. Wright J in Sherras v De Rutzen remarked that there is a presumption that mens rea—an evil intention, or awareness of the act’s wrongfulness—is an essential element of every offence; yet that presumption can be displaced by the statute’s wording or by the subject-matter it addresses, and both must be assessed. It is generally aimed at regulating behaviour that is especially damaging to the public. Here, risks to society rise markedly. The need to protect society overrides the expectation that the prosecution must establish mens rea. Such offences prioritise concrete outcomes over the accused’s mindset, placing a responsibility...

This Practice Note is concerned with secondary liability, sometimes called accessory liability: the liability that attaches to parties to a joint enterprise. In criminal law, when two or more individuals set out on a common venture, whether as principals or as those assisting, each is answerable for deeds carried out in furtherance of that venture, provided the requisite intent is present, save where the principal departs from the agreed boundaries. In the 2016 decisions of R v Jogee and Ruddock v The Queen, the Supreme Court clarified and reinstated the proper approach to the mental element of intention that must be proved where a defendant is alleged to be a secondary participant in an offence; see News Analysis: Supreme Court rules on ‘joint enterprise’. Traditionally, a person assisting could be fixed with liability for an offence carried out by the principal if that person foresaw the possibility that the principal might perpetrate the crime. This was termed parasitic accessory liability, or PAL. After R v...