Criminal Liability

When legislators enact criminal statutes, they must clearly define the components of the crime, including the acts and behavior that constitute the crime and the mental state of the perpetrator. While the legislature is tasked with defining crimes, law enforcement and prosecutors must establish other elements to convict a suspected criminal. To understand how criminal liability is established, it is important to learn the definitions of mens rea and actus rea, the importance of establishing corpus delicti, and the different types of causation.

This resource provides instruction for users to:

• Define terms related to criminal liability and the elements of crime
• Define corpus delicti
• Describe the adversarial system
• Discuss elements of crime
• Describe how negligence can occur
• Evaluate whether simple negligence can provide the basis for criminal liability
• Determine what constitutes the corpus delicti of an offense