1. Principles of criminal liability Coincidence of actus reus and mens rea & transferred malice

2. Lesson objectives I will be able to identify the circumstances where there is coincidence of actus reus and mens rea I will be able to describe the cases involving continuing acts I will be able to describe the concept of transferred malice

3. Coincidence of actus reus and mens rea The general principle is that the actus reus and mens rea of a crime must occur at the same time – this is also called the contemporaneity rule. The idea is that a person cannot be guilty of a crime if he performs an act that causes a previously desired result. E.g. if I go out on Saturday with the intention of hurting X, but fail to do so, it does not make my activity on Wednesday a crime when I accidentally injure X in a car crash not knowing they were in the car

4. The courts have modified this rule so that a series of linked acts or omissions can be treated as a single continuing event. This establishes the coincidence of actus reus and mens rea. A simple example of this is the case of Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner (MPC) (1969) Fagan v MPC (1969) – here there was a continuing act, so there was coincidence of actus reus and mens rea when the mens rea was later formed

5. Sometimes the continuing act is a series of connected acts. This can be seen in a similar manner to the chain of causation; each act or omission is part of the continuing act and the mens rea can be said to continue throughout. This can be seen in the case of Thabo Meli (1954) where the defendant hit the victim over the head intending to kill him. Believing they were dead and trying to make it look like an accident, the defendant threw the victim over a cliff where they later died of exposure. The mens rea continued throughout, as the defendant had set out to kill the victim.

6. Thabo Meli (1954) – here the mens rea formed for the first act continued over a series of acts and a consequence some days later Church (1966) – here the mens rea continued despite the defendant's belief of a change of circumstances

7. Transferred malice This occurs when the defendant’s mens rea is transferred from the intended victim to the actual victim. This can occur either by, for example, hitting one person and knocking them into another whom you have no intention of hitting, or by shooting at one person, missing and injuring another. Mitchell (1983) – this is a good example of transferred malice to the victim through the original person attacked