ACTUS REUS
LITERAL MEANING
An act does not make anyone guilty unless there is a criminal intent or a guilty mind.
ORIGIN
Latin
EXPLANATION
To establish actus reus, a lawyer must prove that the accused party was responsible for an act prohibited by law. It is defined as a criminal act that describes a physical activity that harms another person or damages property. Anything from a physical assault or murder to the destruction of public property would be described as an actus reus. When a person commits a crime, there are physical acts that makeup elements of the crime.
These physical acts, or a failure to act, constitute the actus reus of the crime. In order to charge a person with a crime, the actus reus of the crime must have occurred. If there is no actus reus, then no crime was committed. However, there is an exception to actus reus, when the criminal actions are involuntary. The onus depends on the prosecution to prove the defendant made a conscious and intentional movement. To constitute criminal behavior, the actus reus and the mens rea must occur simultaneously.
Types of Actus Reus
ACTION CRIMES – The wrongdoing in action crimes is just an act, the results of which are immaterial. For example, perjury is committed whenever someone makes a press release which they are doing not believe to be true while on oath. Whether or not that statement makes a difference to the trial isn’t as important as to if the offence of perjury has been committed.
RESULT CRIMES – There are many samples of result crimes several which are Manslaughter, Murder, wounding etc. In this sort of crime, many authors argue that it’s not supported conduct but only on results of crime.
CONDUCT CRIMES – The arrangement of offences into ‘conduct crimes’ and ‘result crimes’ may occasionally seem awkward and futile. Nevertheless, it’s always essential to spot the elemental elements of an offence, and use of this classification sometimes highlights key changes between offences.
No Mens Rea without Actus Reus
Often, within the legal code, a criminal offence is committed when there’s a mixture of wrongdoing and malice aforethought (the guilty mind required for every criminal offence). The wrongdoing for every crime must be established. It is not enough that the malice aforethought for the crime was present if the wrongdoing wasn’t committed also.
ILLUSTRATION
- A drunk driver who kills another is often charged with criminal negligent homicide.
- Arvind shoots Balbinder with an intent to kill, but misses completely. However, later Arvind accidentally runs over Balbinder, resulting in Balbinder’s death. Arvind is not guilty of murder.
CASE LAWS
Ashok Kumar Dixit vs State of U.P.
The Allahabad High Court held that “The maxim which has been accepted in this regard is actus non facit reus nisi mens sit rea. Mens rea denotes “mental” element in the definition of any crime, whereas the other elements of that crime have come to be known as the actus reus thereof. The phrase “actus reus” somebody has commented, is nonsensical.
State v. Hira Nand and others
It was held in this case that, for committing an offence u/s 308 IPC, the accused must have a mental element i.e. mens rea either active or passive i.e. intention or knowledge and actus reus i.e. an act being done according to such mens rea . To carry the accused guilty u/s 308 IPC, the court must return a finding that the accused was having requisite intention or knowledge.
Also Read: Animus Nocendi
