Zoe Bella Hollingsworth
Pearson level 3 national diploma in forensic and criminal investigation
Unit 6a assignment 1
P1: Explain the criminal court system, legal framework, and criminal law that
criminal investigators must adhere to.
The criminal justice system is the governing body that is responsible for
handling criminal cases in the UK. It is part of a variety of different institutions
for example the police, the prison system and the different types of courts.
The criminal court system is made up of three different courts:
The court of appeals, which is the highest court within the senior courts of
the criminal justice system and only works with appeals from other
courts.
Crown courts deal with criminal cases which can be either class 1 (these
are mostly serious crimes like treason and murder), class 2 (these are
usually offences like rape) and class 3 (these are basically all the other
offences like kidnapping, burglary and robbery).
Magistrate's court is where most of the court cases start, they are usually
less serious cases, like motoring offences and minor assaults and they
don’t usually require a judge when being tried.
There are three types of judges that are involved the cases that get taken to
the magistrate’s courts, they are:
District judges, these are full time members of the court, and they usually
deal with the long complex cases that get taken to the court.
Magistrates, these are trained but unpaid and they usually deal with the
less serious criminal cases.
Justices' clerks, these are usually the legal advisors for people working as
magistrates.
P2: Describe examples of crime in terms of Mens Rea and Actus reus.
Mens rea: this is the mental element of the crime, the intention of the offender
to commit the crime.
There are two ways in which mens rea can be shown by a defendant, these are:
Direct intent, this is when a criminal clearly wants a criminal act to occur,
and this is the easiest type of intention to identify because the criminal
wants a set of circumstances to occur.)
R v Byrne (1960): Direct intent can be seen in this case because the
defendant had violent sexual urges which he said he could not control,
which then made him kill a young girl but in this case the fact he had
, those urges was irrelevant because he had clear intentions to kill
someone.
Oblique intent, this is when a criminal act has occurred, but the defendant
did not necessarily want the criminal act to occur. This is harder to
identify as it is difficult to prove someone didn’t want something to occur.
R v Woollin (1998): Oblique intent can be seen in this case because the
defendant threw his son against a wall in a fit of rage, his son then
passed away from the injuries he received, the defendant was charged
with murder but in this case the defendant knew that throwing his son
against a wall would hurt him, but he didn’t know he would die.
There are a few problems with the definitions of direct and oblique intent
because in some cases the defendant’s knowledge of the crime is not involved
with the circumstances of the case. There is specific intent offences and basic
intent offences:
Specific intent offences: these require the intention of mens rea and
usually cover offences like rape, murder or GBH.
Basic intent offences: these require anything less the intention of mens
rea and they usually cover offences like recklessness and negligence.
Actus reus: this is the physical element of the crime; this is the act the criminal
must commit voluntarily in order to commit a crime.
There is a couple of ways in which a defendant can physically commit actus
reus:
A positive voluntary act – a defendant must have made an informed
choice about what they are going to do and do it voluntarily.
Hill v Baxter (1958): in this case the defendant collided with another
vehicle while driving but he claimed that he was overcome with an
unknown illness, this was dismissed, and he was convicted of dangerous
driving.
An omission – usually in criminal law, a person will not be prosecuted for
failing to act in a situation.
R v Khan and khan (1998): in this case the two defendants were drug
dealers, and they gave a 15-year-old prostitute twice the amount of
heroin a normal addict would take, she then went into a coma and later
died because of their negligence, they were convicted of manslaughter
because of their omission to get her medical help.
A state of affairs – this covers when a defendant commits a crime by just
being somewhere at a specific time.
R v Larsonner (1933): this is the case of a French national who was
caught working illegally working in the UK, was then sent back to Ireland
but was sent back to the UK and arrested under the aliens' act 1920, it
