The Principle Of Criminal Intentions

The principle of criminal intention is subject to many other exceptions and qualifications. For a very few offenses, known as offenses of strict liability, it is abandoned completely or is allowed only a limited scope. For example, employers may be held liable if employees are injured on the job, regardless of how carefully the employers followed safety precautions, and manufacturers may be held liable for injuries that result from product defectiveness, even if they exhibited no fault or negligence in the manufacturing process whatsoever. For a very few other offenses, the individual must have a “specific intent” either to commit a crime (e.g., a common definition of burglary involves breaking and entering a dwelling “with intent to commit a felony therein”) or to achieve the consequences of an act (e.g., first-degree murder usually requires the specific intent to achieve the death of the victim). The fact that an individual had been drinking or using drugs before committing a crime is not in itself a defense, except possibly for crimes that require such specific intent. Provocation is not generally a defense either, except in cases of murder, where evidence of a high degree of provocation (in English law, sufficient to provoke a reasonable person into acting in the same way as the accused) could result in a verdict of manslaughter, even if the killing was intentional. On the other hand, some “felony murder” statutes attribute criminal intention to any deaths that occur during the commission of certain “dangerous felonies.” This is similar to strict liability. For example, in one case in the United States, a person committing a robbery took a hostage, who then was accidentally killed by the police. The robber was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.