Information AboutConcurrence |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT CONCURRENCE | |
| criminal law | |
|
''For other uses, see Concurrency .'' Concurrence, '''Contemporaneity''' and '''Simultaneity''' are Legal terms, from Western Jurisprudence , referring to the apparent need to prove the simultaneous occurrence of both '' Actus Reus '' ("guilty action") and '' Mens Rea '' ("guilty mind"), to constitute a Crime ; except in crimes of Strict Liability . In theory, if the ''actus reus'' does not coincide in point of time with the ''mens rea'' then no crime has been committed. DISCUSSION Suppose for example that, by accident while driving, the accused injures a pedestrian. Aware of the collision, the accused rushes from the car only to find that the victim is a hated enemy. At this point, the accused literally jumps up and down with joy proclaiming how pleased he or she is to have caused this injury. The conventional rule is that no crime has been committed. The ''actus reus'' is complete and no rule of ratification applies in the Criminal Law, i.e. whereas in the Law Of Agency a Principal may retrospectively adopt a transaction as if he or she had originally authorised the Agent to conclude an agreement with the Third Party and so acquires liability under that agreement, an alleged criminal cannot retrospectively adopt an ''actus reus'' and acquire guilt. To be convicted, the accused must have formed the ''mens rea'' either before or during the commission of the ''actus reus'' and, in the vast majority of cases, this rule works without difficulty. Two Types of Concurrence in Criminal Law: 1. Temporal Concurrence- the actus reus and mens rea occur at the same time. 2. Motivational Concurrence- the mens rea motivates the actus reus. THE PROBLEM Not all events are limited to a particular moment in time. The normal physical rules of Cause and effect may see a series of interlocking circumstances conspire to cause a particular injury. If the facts of the example above are slightly changed so that the accident occurs at night at a sharp bend on a very quiet country road. When the driver sees the victim lying in the road he simply leaves the unconscious person where he fell. Some hours later, when a second car innocently comes around the corner and kills the victim, the first driver is happily asleep in his bed. Thus, he argues that, at the time of the death, he had no ''mens rea'' and so cannot be guilty of homicide. This argument fails because of the so-called ''Single Transaction Principle'' SINGLE TRANSACTION PRINCIPLE
But not every factual sequence can be so conveniently recast as an omission. Suppose, for example, that A sees his enemy, B, and decides to attack him. A picks up a stick and begins to chase B who runs into a hotel, up the stairs and into a room, locking the door behind him. A hammers at the door, shouting threats. A then sees a fire axe in a glass case nearby. He tells B that he is going for the axe and will break down the door. When A walks away, B is so terrified that he jumps out of the window and breaks his legs. Even though A might not have had an immediate intention to injure B at the critical moment when B jumped, the fear was inspired with an appropriate intention and B would not have been desperate enough to jump had it not been for that fear. [It is fair to exclude liability when B's fear is entirely unreasonable given A's behaviour because B's self-induced injury will break the chain of causation}. This latter example raises a separate issue which is that it is sufficient to base a conviction on the presence of ''mens rea'' at some time during the occurrence of the events comprising the single transaction. The fact that the accused might mistakenly believe that he or she has succeeded in the crime will not prevent a conviction. For example, suppose that A begins to strangle B and, believing B to be dead, abandons the "body" in nearby woods where B dies of exposure. A will still be convicted of the homicide even though the relevant behaviour of abandoning the body was not accompanied by a ''mens rea''. And for the sake of completeness, if A commits an offence with an ''actus reus'' and a ''mens rea'', it will not affect liability that A subsequently repents the crime and effects restitution. Thus, if A steals goods from B but then returns them together with some money to make good the damage caused during the forced entry, this cannot change the fact that there was an ''actus reus'' accompanied by an appropriate ''mens rea''. A crime was committed although the subsequent conscience-based behaviour would be a relevant consideration during the Sentencing stage of the trial. ENGLISH CASE LAW EXAMPLES
REFERENCES
|
|
|