Recycled Malice

by Findlay Stark

Criminal lawyers accept a doctrine of transferred malice, but while doing so, also seem to accept that in so being transferred, malice can be multiplied, such that a person who intended to harm one other person can find themselves convicted of intentionally harming several people. In this post, I argue that ‘recycling malice’ in this way is inappropriate, and that this conclusion casts doubt even on the logic of the more accepted doctrine of transferred malice.

Mental States and Evidence: Inferring and Declaring the Mind

by Kajsa Dinesson & J.P. Fassnidge

For most criminal offences, the accused’s acts must be paired with a particular mental state – a mens rea. But how do we determine the presence of mental states in law? In this post, we explore how we might make sense of the relationship between evidence and mental states in the context of the criminal trial. We propose that evidence for mental states is not used as proof of the presence of a mental state. Rather, it is used to justify an inferred normative judgement about the presence of a mental state, which ascribes a given mental state as the best explanation for the accused’s acts.