According to Criminal Law and Procedure, mens rea is defined as the mental capacity a person has, and the liability or responsibility deemed by the person that commits a crime based on the criminal mindset that influences the criminal act (Hall, 2015). The term mens rea can be interpreted differently as discussed in the reading material provided and is known as a guilty mind. "It is best defined as the state of mind required to be criminally liable for a certain act", (Hall, 2015, p. 57). One of the first phases of producing evidence of a crime that has been committed by the prosecution is to provide sufficient evidence that the suspect committed the crime, with a criminal intent or guilty mind per se (Bethel, 2015). Consequently, there are several different types of intents that assist mean rea in ascertaining certain motives and behavioral patterns of the defendant. If the defendant commits a crime with intentions of fulfilling the criminal act in its full resolution, it is considered a specific intent. If the defendant's criminal act results in a different outcome than what the defendant anticipated, it is considered a general intent (Hall, 2015). Constructive intent is another intent that goes in conjunction with specific intent, as the criminal motive remains but the outcome is different than what was anticipated by …show more content…
Subjective intent is basically what was in the mind of the defendant at the time of the crime and we can only attempt to understand their motives to commit the crime. Objective intent differs from subjective intent, as it focuses on what a reasonable person's ideology would be if they were put in the defendant's shoes at the time of the crime. Would a reasonable person have played out the criminal scenario as the defendant or would not have committed the crime as they have known that it was illegal (Hall,