4 ms·

Clearly I'm not a lawyer so I'm not confident in this, you might be right. Is mens rea ever used that way in practice? I don't understand how you could prove th

Clearly I'm not a lawyer so I'm not confident in this, you might be right. Is mens rea ever used that way in practice? I don't understand how you could prove that in court. A text message saying "I'm gonna kill that guy" might be evidence of intent, but nobody ever says "I'm gonna kill that guy, thereby committing a felony under US law". How could you possibly prove that somebody knew an action would be illegal? Would you allow the possibility that Wikipedia is wrong? I can't find any other reference that talks about knowledge of the law itself, and it logically doesn't make any sense. Also, "mens rea" itself is just a vague Latin phrase, so the only meaningful "definition" is how it's actually applied in the world.

hnick 6y ago
> How could you possibly prove that somebody knew an action would be illegal? I'm far from an expert but I think usually the "reasonable" keyword applies to such things in law. A "reasonable" person would know killing is wrong - and they'll say you mightn't, too bad, pay attention to society. A "reasonable" person might not know some obscure tax law they broke by mistake so they have to make it right and pay it back, but not be punished too harshly otherwise. OTOH you'd expect an accountant to know so you could infer intent and they could be handled more sternly.