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Should The Model Penal Code's Mens Rea Provisions Be Amended?, Kenneth Simons
Should The Model Penal Code's Mens Rea Provisions Be Amended?, Kenneth Simons
Faculty Scholarship
The Model Penal Code approach to mens rea was a tremendous advance. The MPC carefully defines a limited number of mens rea terms, firmly establishes element analysis in place of offense analysis, and recognizes that the doctrine of mistake is part and parcel of the basic analysis of mens rea.
However, a revised Code could improve the drafting of the mens rea provisions in a number of respects:
* Clarify how to distinguish result, circumstance, and result elements
* Simplify the definitions of knowledge and purpose
* Perhaps eliminate the category of mens rea as to conduct
* Clarify the …
Does Punishment For 'Culpable Indifference' Simply Punish For 'Bad Character'? Examining The Requisite Connection Between Mens Rea And Actus Reus, Kenneth Simons
Faculty Scholarship
The conventional mental state or culpability categories recognized in the criminal law are purpose, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence. Should the law also recognize as an additional category some version of "culpable indifference"? Yes, according to a number of scholars; and some courts have also recognized this category, especially in the context of depraved heart murder. Culpable indifference can describe a modestly culpable mental state, sufficient for manslaughter liability (or, with respect to a circumstance element, roughly equivalent in seriousness to cognitive recklessness). It can also identify a more aggravated form of culpability, sufficient for murder (or, with respect to a …
The Integrationist Alternative To The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Exculpatory Scope Of Mental Illness In The Wake Of The Andrea Yates Trial, Christopher Slobogin
The Integrationist Alternative To The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Exculpatory Scope Of Mental Illness In The Wake Of The Andrea Yates Trial, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates took the lives of her five children by drowning them, one by one, in a bathtub. At her trial on capital murder charges nine months later, she pleaded insanity. Despite very credible evidence that she had long suffered from serious mental disorder, a Texas jury convicted Yates of murder and sentenced her to life in prison. Her tragic and controversial case led many to question whether the so-called "M'Naghten" test for insanity, which forms the basis for the insanity defense in Texas, adequately defines the exculpatory effect of mental disorder. This article is based …