Criminal Law: Elements and Case Analysis

Criminal law
1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4
2

INTRODUCTION
There is high rise in crimes due to many reasons and factors. It has highly affected on social life
of people. Criminal law refer to act of a person in context of crime. There is a body who govern
and regulate crime related matters. It deals with behavior of people and how it relate with
society. There are certain principles as well on basis of which criminal law is applied.
The report will describe about a case of paul and sharon and criminal liability. Also, it will
mention about two elements of crime actus reus and mens rea. Moreover, the IRAC method will
be explained of solving case.
MAIN BODY
In a crime usually there are two elements in it they are actus reus and mens rea. The actus reus
mean to have a guilty act and mens rea means to have a guilty mind. It state that in view of
society it is wrong to punish those who causes harm to innocent person. However, in actus reus it
state that society is only eligible to punish bad deeds not bad thoughts. Therefore, in order to
analyse and constitute behavior of crime these two concept are used. Similarly, in case of paul
and sharon it is found that sharon attacked paul in a party. Now, here actus reus of Sharon is that
she only wanted to punish paul for seeing other women even after getting married. Also, she
want to punish him for having an affair with her best friend sally. Thus, it is identified that there
was no bad thoughts of haron in this. Moreover, sharon mens rea is she killed paul who was
innocent person. But for what Paul did to her that is having affair with Sally. In addition, Paul
mens rea is that he was innocent so he need not to be punished or killed by sharon. Besides that,
paul actus reus was that he was punished for his bad deeds. This means despite making promise
to his wife he was having an affair with her best friend Sally. Thus, he was punished for his bad
deeds.
In addition to it, there is offense and defence is criminal law. Offence refer to violation of
law and doing an act which results in breach of law. On contrary defence means lack of capacity
of defendant to be held legally responsible. This can be either in terms of insanity, infancy and
intoxication. Similarly, in current case as well there were offense and defence. The offence was
that of sharon who violated act of crime. He attacked paul with knife. However, sharon behavior
is defence due to lack of Insanity. Her behavior was highly influenced due to accident in which
she lost her child and even after fertility treatment she was not able to become a mother.
3