Mens Rea What is mens rea? Mens rea is the Latin words for criminal intent. In the criminal justice field, this phrase is very important. It is a big deal because for a crime to be committed there has to be the criminal intent by the person accused of the crime. In the case I will discuss today the issue is whether the person in this case Maria, had the criminal intent or not. Maria was in Mexico when she was approached by a woman who offered her one thousand dollars to cross a car over to the United States. The car had cocaine concealed in a secret compartment which Maria knew about but had no clue there was drugs in it. Maria was charged with importing and possessing with intent to sell a controlled substance. The mens rea for these two …show more content…
If there is no problem with passing the car over to the United States why doesn’t the woman save her money and move the car herself. Either Maria is playing stupid or she actually is and should not be visiting Mexico on her own. Maria not had the intent to cross drugs over but she had the intent to make easy money. Easy money is usually dirty money. The average person in Mexico makes about one hundred and fifty dollars a week. For a person to make one thousand dollars legally in Mexico it would take about seven weeks. That is a lot of hard work to just give away that money like it was a small amount. How is it logic to receive that much money from random woman in Mexico? Any person in their right mind would find the situation a bit fishy. If you have not realized it yet I do believe that Maria is guilty of those charges. There are just too many things from her side of the story that do not make sense. In the situation she pretend to be in she should have told the authorities about the strange woman who offered her money or kept her and her nose out of it. I believe that her story was her way to try to get out of the situation acting like she didn’t know the drug was there. She just failed to think things through and now she is paying for