Brad Pitt did this to me once.
We haven’t spoken since.
For that matter, there’s presumably the suspicion he DELIBERATELY got it wrong…
AFAIK some crimes require intent, some are based soley on what you do (barring insanity) some rest on ‘reasonable’ beleifs.
How certain does he have to be? If she’d signed a statement with him watching saying ‘go ahead, I consent to sex’ but didn’t mean it because she had a tryst with his identical twin brother who had a fetish about signing stupid documents, what should he have done? What purpose does it serve to punish someone who could not reasonably have been more certain.
Of course, in this case he SHOULD have been a lot more careful - if, hypothetically, I was going to do this I’d be **** sure to have about 5 safeguards…
He’s not comparing the severity of the acts, but whether a reasonably mistake is a defense. Admittedly, I don’t think the comparison helps especially.
So you believe that in my hypothetical, whether a crime was committed, and what crime was committed, somehow depends on the person who was hit?
Fascinating.
- Rick
Of course, thats why the cops generally shoot first, and verify location after finding no joint on the deceased (and desisted…)
Judges generally throw out cases of the survivors. It seems if YOU are killed, your relatives can press charges like a motherhonker.
I suspect that drug possession had a lot to do with his guilty plea. I notice that the article mentions what charges were dropped, but doesn’t say what he plead guilty to.
OTOH, it could be that prosecution and defense haggled and settled on a charge which would give an agreed on prison term.
And utterly wrong, I might add.
Unfinished thought, don’t be so quick to start making snide remarks. What is up with that lately? Everyone on the boards is quick to jump on someone for a single remark without even letting the person explain themselves…
What should have been said is that it depended on the feelings of the attacked towards the situation. Say I’m walking down the street and someone punches me rather hard in the arm. I turn around and I’m about to get pissed, when the guy says, “Holy crap, I swear I thought you were my best friend, I’m so sorry”. Am I gonna file charges for assault? No.
Or maybe a more similar case, say I come home after a long day and I’m going upstairs to change. I notice my wife/girlfriend laying down in bed, looking as though she’s taking a nap. I hop in bed and begin tickling and doing various things to her (you can pretend I’m naked at this point and sporting a raging boner if it helps the analogy), until I realize it’s really not her and it’s a friend of hers. I could be tried for rape, but hell if you could find someone who would press charges in her situation.
But the issue is not whether the victim in this case might wish to press charges, but whether the perpetrator could be convicted. And that depends on his state of mind, not hers.
Wow. It took you over 24 hours to “complete” your thought. Maybe you should start typing with two fingers.
In any case, your explanation doesn’t help your position any. Neither of your hypotheticals are on point. It’s not a matter of “pressing charges.” If Brad Pitt lacks the requisite mental state, he has not committed a crime. Even if the guy “presses charges,” there will not be a criminal conviction. In fact, Brad isn’t even civilly liable, though the guy who measured the rope probably is.
In most common law jurisdiction, a “bad act” is not enough for most crimes. You must also have the correct mental state. For example, merely killing someone is not a crime. To be murder, you must act with “malice.” If you kill someone by being grossly negligent, you’re guilty of manslaughter. If you run down half-a-dozen elementary school students in the cross walk because you were distracted when you spilled hot coffee in your lap, you’re not guilty of any crime.
As Bricker points out, assuming this story is true, this guy would not have been guilty of rape because he reasonably believed the victim consented. Yes, it’s still traumatic for the “victim,” but that’s no reason to take it out on the “perpetrator” who, in this case, is actually innocent.
IIRC, you’re right about this but it’s never quite made sense to me. Mens rea is, by definition, focused on the defendant’s subjective mental state. If he didn’t have the guilty mental state, e.g., he really thought she did consent, then it shouldn’t matter whether an objectively reasonable person would believe she consented. If you can be convicted wirh an unreasonable but “good faith” belief that consent was present, you’ve essentialy reduced the mens rea to negligence. Maybe if your good-faith belief is unreasonable enough, you can raise an insanity defense. 
I am honestly asking your opinion not challenging anything you have said.
It seems to me that if Rape is unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent, then the defendant in this case could not be guilty of Attempted Rape, because he did not have the requisite mens rea. However, had he actually achieved intercourse, would it matter what he in fact believed? There does not seem to be a mens rea element to Rape. The elements are simply intercourse without consent. Have I stayed up too late and missed something simple? I mean he did not attempt to engage in unlawful entercourse, he thought he had consent, so he was attempting (unsuccesfully) to engage in lawfull intercourse.
I have a problem with the “reasonableness” of getting consent for sex in advance over the internet with someone you have never met.
The guy should have known that, since he had never met the woman, he couldn’t know it was really her when he got there.
There is also no way to know if perhaps the person on the internet is setting someone else up.
My feeling is that it is in fact NOT reasonable to get consent for a simulated rape over the internet from someone you never met. Nor is it insanity. It is a negligent disregard for the dangers.
Thus if he had gone through with it, it would be rape.
However, it WAS arguably reasonable for him to go to the agreed place, and make sure before actually doing it. Therefore, since he made sure, and he did not go through with it, it was not attempted rape.
Just to clarify:
I don’t think it was reasonable for him to hit the woman before making sure it was the right woman.
Thus an assault charge is perfectly justified.
The general proposition is that there is a mens rea element to every crime. Where the legislature seeks to create a strict liability crime, it generally must explicitly do so.
In Virginia, for example, see Turner v. Commonwealth, 33 Va. App. 88, 92-93,
531 S.E.2d 619, 621 (2000) and Roger D. Groot, Criminal Offenses & Defenses in Virginia 107-18 (2004).
- Rick
The Supreme Court of California, in 1975, ruled that a defendant may raise a “mistake of fact” defense to a rape charge in People v. Mayberry. They believed that a reasonable and good faith mistake of fact regarding consent is incompatible with the existence of wrongful intent (also known as mens rea) required for criminal liability. The defense has both a subjective and an objective component. As the California Supreme Court laid out in People v. Williams:
People v. Williams (1992) 4 Cal.4th 354, 360-361.
This “But I thought she consented” defense is an affirmative defense, in which the defendant has the burden of raising a reasonable doubt as to whether he harbored a reasonable and good faith, but mistaken, belief of consent.
Not that any of this applies in this case, but there you have it.
OK, let’s take the hypothetic situation a bit further.
A woman wakes up in the middle of the night in darkness to a man actually penetrating her. He is doing this by mistake and does not have the mens rea to be “committing a crime”. The woman is naturally somewhat upset to be raped in the dark by a strange man and struggles, then finally grabs a gun under her pillow and shoots the man dead.
She can’t claim she was defending herself from a crime now? Because he wasn’t committing one?
So…is she committing a crime? Or does she lack the same mens rea?
And doesn’t anyone think that IRL someone would not end up in jail over this? I really, really doubt that she would escape charges. Nor that the man would escape charges if the hypothetical woman couldn’t defend herself, and when the man finished violating her he realized his mistake and said “Oh sorry, wrong house.”
And am I to understand that this wouldn’t even be a winnable civil case? Given the sorts of drek that some juries made up of rabble allow to win in our courts today?
She isn’t committing a crime. She is defending herself from physical assault. The fact that the man was not committing a crime is of no moment – indeed, the same principle that shields him from criminal liabiliity also shields her.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that there must be a crime somewhere in this mess. As it happens, although there’s plenty of mayhem and injury, there is no crime.
Look, in the world of hypotheticals, we all agree on the facts. That’s what makes them hypotheticals. In real life, there are plenty of questions of fact to be decided at a trial, and the outcome depends upon the resolution of those questions. Was his belief that he had the right house objectively reasonable? That’s for the finder of fact to determine. In our hypo, we slide comfortably past that – we declare that his belief was, although mistaken, reasonable.
Same thing – in real life, juries have to be convinced of facts. We were discussing how the concept of mens rea applies to the various hypotheticals here - what, as a matter of law, is the answer to a given set of facts.
- Rick
Una Person
I think the woman’s plea of self defense would hinge more on that she had reason to fear for her life. I can’t see why the defense would raise the issue of whether or not the man had committed a crime. They need simply present the facts, and convince the jury that the woman feared for her life and acted out of self defense.
IANALawyer, but I assume things like the incident in the OP are one of the reasons why we have seperate charges for sexual assault and such.
OK, I (of course) agree that the hypothetical is different from IRL. It’s just in some issues, the difference is not so large, and in this one I believe the difference between the hypothetical and the real is profound.
DocCathode: isn’t it the other way around? Doesn’t the prosecution have to prove that she was not in fear of her life and/or acting out of self defense?
In a case like this, you should have 2 safe words, one which means ‘OK’ and one which means ‘not OK’. The responsible thing for them to do would have been to work out a ‘go ahead’ code to be used at the very beginning.
e.g.: he crashes through the window, and she yells out, “Klaatu Barada Nicto!”, so he knows it’s OK.
Of course, it may be even better to not agree to this kind of scenario with someone you’ve never even met, but YMMV.