The M'Naghten rule is any variant of the 1840s jury instruction in a criminal case when there is a defence of insanity:
that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and ... that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.
In criminal law, Actus reus, Latin for "guilty act", is one of the elements normally required to prove commission of a crime in common law jurisdictions, the other being mens rea. In the United States it is sometimes called the external element or the objective element of a crime.
In criminal law, automatism is a rarely used criminal defence. It is one of the mental condition defences that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability (unconsciousness) or excuse. Automatism means that the defendant was not aware of his or her actions when making the particular movements that constituted the illegal act.
R v Daviault [1994] 3 S.C.R. 63, is a Supreme Court of Canada decision on the availability of the defence of intoxication for "general intent" criminal offences. The Leary rule which eliminated the defence was found unconstitutional in violation of both section 7 and 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Instead, intoxication can only be used as a defence where it is so extreme that it is akin to automatism or insanity.
A drug-related crime is a crime to possess, manufacture, or distribute drugs classified as having a potential for abuse. Drugs are also related to crime as drug trafficking and drug production are often controlled by drug cartels, organised crime and gangs. Some drug-related crime involves crime against the person such as robbery or sexual assaults.
Although the legal system of Singapore is a common law system, the criminal law of Singapore is largely statutory in nature and historically derives largely from the Indian penal code. The general principles of criminal law, as well as the elements and penalties of general criminal offences such as assault, criminal intimidation, mischief, grievous hurt, theft, extortion, sex crimes and cheating, are set out in the Singaporean Penal Code. Other serious offences are created by statutes such as the Arms Offences Act, Kidnapping Act, Misuse of Drugs Act and Vandalism Act.
R v Quick [1973] QB 910 is an English criminal case, as to sane automatism and the sub-category of self-inducement of such a state. The court ruled that it may not be used as a defence if the defendant's loss of self-control was on the part of negligence in consuming or not consuming something which someone ought to but the jury must be properly directed so as to make all relevant findings of fact. The ruling stresses that automatism is usually easily distinct from insanity, in the few cases where the lines are blurred it is a complex problem for prosecutors and mental health professionals.
R v Bailey is a 1983 decision of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales considering criminal responsibility as to non-insane automatism. The broad questions addressed were whether a hampered state of mind, which the accused may have a legal and moral duty to lessen or avoid, gave him a legal excuse for his actions; and whether as to any incapacity there was strong countering evidence on the facts involved. The court ruled that the jury had been misdirected as to the effect of a defendant's mental state on his criminal liability. However, Bailey's defence had not been supported by sufficient evidence to support an acquittal and his appeal was dismissed.
English criminal law concerns offences, their prevention and the consequences, in England and Wales. Criminal conduct is considered to be a wrong against the whole of a community, rather than just the private individuals affected. The state, in addition to certain international organisations, has responsibility for crime prevention, for bringing the culprits to justice, and for dealing with convicted offenders. The police, the criminal courts and prisons are all publicly funded services, though the main focus of criminal law concerns the role of the courts, how they apply criminal statutes and common law, and why some forms of behaviour are considered criminal. The fundamentals of a crime are a guilty act and a guilty mental state. The traditional view is that moral culpability requires that a defendant should have recognised or intended that they were acting wrongly, although in modern regulation a large number of offences relating to road traffic, environmental damage, financial services and corporations, create strict liability that can be proven simply by the guilty act.
Settled insanity is defined as a permanent or "settled" condition caused by long-term substance abuse and differs from the temporary state of intoxication. In some United States jurisdictions "settled insanity" can be used as a basis for an insanity defense, even though voluntary intoxication cannot, if the "settled insanity" negates one of the required elements of the crime such as malice aforethought. However, U.S. federal and state courts have differed in their interpretations of when the use of "settled insanity" is acceptable as an insanity defense and also over what is included in the concept of "settled insanity".
In the field of criminal law, there are a variety of conditions that will tend to negate elements of a crime, known as defenses. The label may be apt in jurisdictions where the accused may be assigned some burden before a tribunal. However, in many jurisdictions, the entire burden to prove a crime is on the prosecution, which also must prove the absence of these defenses, where implicated. In other words, in many jurisdictions the absence of these so-called defenses is treated as an element of the crime. So-called defenses may provide partial or total refuge from punishment.
Scots criminal law relies far more heavily on common law than in England and Wales. Scottish criminal law includes offences against the person of murder, culpable homicide, rape and assault, offences against property such as theft and malicious mischief, and public order offences including mobbing and breach of the peace. Scottish criminal law can also be found in the statutes of the UK Parliament with some areas of criminal law, such as misuse of drugs and traffic offences appearing identical on both sides of the Border. Scottish criminal law can also be found in the statute books of the Scottish Parliament such as the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 and Prostitution (Scotland) Act 2007 which only apply to Scotland. In fact, the Scots requirement of corroboration in criminal matters changes the practical prosecution of crimes derived from the same enactment. Corroboration is not required in England or in civil cases in Scotland. Scots law is one of the few legal systems that require corroboration.
Brennan v HM Advocate 1977 JC 38 was a Scots criminal appeal case decided in the High Court of Justiciary in its capacity as the Court of Criminal Appeal. The case set the precedent that voluntary intoxication, whether by drink or drugs, cannot be used to establish defences of automatism or insanity.
R v Burgess [1991] 2 QB 92 was an appeal in the Court of Appeal of England and Wales that adjudged sleepwalking entailing violence from an internal, organic cause amounts to insane automatism. At first instance Burgess was likewise found not guilty by reason of insanity as his case fell under the M'Naghten Rules. This would entail a possible stigma and a treatment plan. His defence team appealed arguing such automatism was no form of 'insanity' but fell within the class of automatism such as a spiked drink which could show a complete lack of mens rea, outside the realms of normal mental health, to make him guilty. The court ruled that violent sleepwalking with no external triggers was considered insane automatism. Thus the appeal was heard, argued, the law and its consequences judicially considered. The appeal was dismissed.
Intoxication in English law is a circumstance which may alter the capacity of a defendant to form mens rea, where a charge is one of specific intent, or may entirely negate mens rea where the intoxication is involuntary. The fact that a defendant is intoxicated in the commission of a crime — whether voluntarily or not — has never been regarded as a full defence to criminal proceedings. Its development at common law has been shaped by the acceptance that intoxicated individuals do not think or act as rationally as they would otherwise, but also by a public policy necessity to punish individuals who commit crimes.
R v Lipman [1970] 1 QB 152 is an English criminal law precedent that self-induced (voluntary) intoxication, however extreme, is no defence to manslaughter, provided a loss of control is foreseen by becoming intoxicated. The defendant in voluntarily taking dangerous drugs was found to have taken a dangerous risk which ordinary individuals would foresee, with his lack of intention to carry out dangerous acts not thereafter being relevant to a conviction of manslaughter.
Unconscious fraud is fraud committed by somebody who does not consciously realise that they are deceiving others. Examples could be a hypnotised person or perhaps a medium in a trance, neither of whom would consciously realise that they are engaging in acts which make others believe – such as that a 'spirit' has moved an object.
South African criminal law is the body of national law relating to crime in South Africa. In the definition of Van der Walt et al., a crime is "conduct which common or statute law prohibits and expressly or impliedly subjects to punishment remissible by the state alone and which the offender cannot avoid by his own act once he has been convicted." Crime involves the infliction of harm against society. The function or object of criminal law is to provide a social mechanism with which to coerce members of society to abstain from conduct that is harmful to the interests of society.
In S v Chretien, an important case in South African criminal law, especially as it pertains to the defence of automatism, the Appellate Division held that even automatism arising out of voluntary intoxication may constitute an absolute defence, leading to a total acquittal, where, inter alia, the accused drinks so much that they lack criminal capacity.
R v Brown, 2022 SCC 18, is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the constitutionality of section 33.1 of the Criminal Code, which prohibited an accused from raising self-induced intoxication as a defence to criminal charges. The Court unanimously held that the section violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and struck it down as unconstitutional. The Court delivered the Brown decision alongside the decision for its companion case R v Sullivan.
