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Mens rea

University of Georgia School of Law

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Purpose’S Purposes: Culpability, Liberty, Legal Wrongs, And Accomplice Mens Rea, Kevin Cole Mar 2024

Purpose’S Purposes: Culpability, Liberty, Legal Wrongs, And Accomplice Mens Rea, Kevin Cole

Georgia Criminal Law Review

The federal mens rea for accomplice liability—important in its own right and also as an example to the states—is unsettled. Three cases from the just completed Supreme Court term hint (somewhat surprisingly) at various directions the justices might take. This essay examines the cases with a particular focus on the alternative explanations that might be given for the traditional requirement of purposeful facilitation for accomplice liability. The purpose requirement is contestable so long as it is justified in terms of a narrow conception of culpability. It is better understood as serving a liberty-enhancing function. The liberty focus clarifies difficult questions …


Entrapment When The Spoken Word Is The Crime, James F. Ponsoldt, Stephen Marsh Mar 2000

Entrapment When The Spoken Word Is The Crime, James F. Ponsoldt, Stephen Marsh

Scholarly Works

The task of this Article is to assess the competing approaches that circuit courts have taken in defining the predisposition element in entrapment cases. It then attempts to try to reconcile them, not only with Jacobson v. United States, but also with policy concerns underlying the rest of the Supreme Court's entrapment jurisprudence, particularly in light of the increased politicization of federal criminal law through investigations of public officials' conduct by independent counsel. This Article will first frame the central issue, the supplementary mens rea requirement arising in entrapment cases. Part II then will review the common law development …