Subjective Test of Mens Rea Research Proposal

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However, domestic violence has been more appropriately described as domestic terrorism, and the heightened fear and heightened awareness experienced by victims has an undeniable impact on their reasoning skills. As a result, it is important that battered women who use deadly force against their batterers when they are not in an immediately life-threatening situation be able to demonstrate that their behavior was reasonable without resorting to a quasi-insanity plea, like battered women's syndrome. Instead, if someone who has consistently battered and abused someone threatens to hunt a victim down and kill them, that victim can reasonably believe that nothing short of the batterer's death will save the victim's life. This changes how the victim views other legal terms, and can make them feel like the threat of death is imminent and unavoidable, even if there is no overt threat of violence. This is an important consideration, because it allows a victim to escape criminal liability for a non-criminal action without affirmatively pleading a condition like battered women's syndrome, which could be used against them in civil proceedings regarding custody and estate distribution.

Fifth, a subjective test of mens rea allows one to consider a victim's religious considerations when determining state-of-mind. Many people would have issues with allowing religious considerations to impact whether or not a defendant would be found guilty. However, those concerns are based upon assumptions that all religious share the same basic behavioral norms, which simply is not the case. Therefore, some behavior that would seem absolutely unreasonable to members of one religious group may seem appropriate to members of another religious group. This standard is especially important when viewed in conjunction with affirmative insanity defenses. For example, some women who suffer from post-partum psychosis actually suffer from delusions that direct them towards killing their children, and some of these delusions can be overtly religious in nature.

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Looking at a defendant's religious background can help one understand whether, in light of that background, a defendant acted in a reasonable manner. Many religions explicitly state that their deity would not direct a person to behave in such a manner, so that such delusions should be sufficient to inform the person that they are not acting in a reasonable manner. However, other religions build on a history of parental sacrifice by children and suggest that every follower has the ability to speak directly with God. Therefore, a person engaging in that belief could honestly state that they followed their compulsions because they were directed to do so by God. This would not entitle the person to an absolute guilty verdict, but would allow her to successfully utilize an insanity defense.

Finally, a subjective test of mens rea allows the fact finders to consider the entire range of circumstances to determine if any reasonable person could have engaged in the same behavior as the defendant. Human beings come in a huge range of characteristics, and individual characteristics do impact whether or not a person is behaving in a reasonable manner. Not being able to consider what makes an individual unique means that one really cannot understand whether or not that person is behaving reasonably. For example, a fifteen-year-old whose parents are drug addicts and who is engaged in stealing behavior to support his own addiction is acting in a more reasonable manner than a fifteen-year-old from a good family who is stealing to support his addiction. The criminal law should be allowed to consider individual differences when determining culpability, because the reasonable man does not commit crimes. Instead, the question must be whether a reasonable person, in a defendant's specific individual position, could have committed that crime......

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