This document is a summary of Mens Rea within Criminal Law, using cases to back up answers
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A2 Unit G153 - Criminal Law
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Mens Rea
Mens Rea is what is known as the mental element of an offence or “the guilty mind” of the
defendant at the time of the offence. The different types of Mens Rea, intention and
recklessness, are used for different severities of offences.
The first type of Mens Rea is known as intention, in the case of R v Mohan, intention is referred
to “a decision to bring about the criminal consequence, it does not matter whether the accused
desired the consequence of his act or not”. This means that the D’s reasoning for the act is not
relevant but it is important to note that the defendant decided to bring about the offence. Direct
intent means that the defendant must of had a desire, aim and a purpose to bring about an
offence, again proven by R v Mohan. Oblique intent, however, is used when the offence is not
clearly what D wanted to achieve and so it is for a jury to find that they had the intent of the
result. In R v Woollin, the outcome of that case stated that the jury may only find intent if they
can see that serious harm was a virtual certain consequence of D’s act and they also have to
find that D appreciates that fact. However, Oblique intent is only used for serious offences, such
as GBH, which require intention as the MR.
The second type of Mens Rea is known as recklessness, the definition of which is “taking an
unjustifiable risk and carry on regardless.” The case of R v Cunningham brought about
subjective recklessness. In this case, subjective recklessness is when the D takes and
unjustifiable risk and can foresee that some sort of harm can occur. However, the case of R v
Savage, the defendant does not have to foresee risk of actual or serious hard but just some
harm.
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