Notes and Questions

Criminal offense definitions nearly always require proof of something more than an “act,” or conduct. In the standard description, criminal offenses may have three kinds of elements: (1) conduct, (2) circumstances, and (3) results. Murder is the classic offense defined by the result (“causing the death of another”). Not all offenses have all three types; many offenses require no result or consequence. Circumstance elements include a wide range statutory requirement—e.g., the victim’s age (as in a child abuse or statutory rape statute); the time of day or the status of the building (burglary was once defined as entry into “the dwelling house of another at nighttime”); surrounding conditions (conduct done “in circumstances likely to cause harm”); or who owns property (taking of “the property of another”). Can you identify the all the elements in the offenses at issue in Stark and Sargent?

Stark repeats the standard definition of general intent: “the intent to do the act.” For some offenses, that provides a clear answer about the mens rea of the offense. But for other offenses, such as the statute at issue Sargent, “general intent” provides a less clear answer. There, the key question is whether the prosecution must prove something more about the defendant’s mental state regarding other elements of the crime. This is one reason that courts and commentators have long complained that “Specific and general intent have been notoriously difficult terms to define and apply, and a number of text writers recommend that they be abandoned altogether.” People v. Hood, 462 P.2d 370 (Cal. 1969). But determining what else, beyond his conduct, that an offender must intend, know, or be aware of can pose difficult interpretative questions, as in Sargent.

California’s felony child abuse statute effectively defines more than one offense, because harm can be inflicted directly (or actively) by the defendant, or indirectly (or passively) by, for example, permitting someone else to abuse the child. Both forms of child abuse are general intent crimes. General intent answers the mens rea question relatively easily for direct infliction cases—the offender must intend his physical actions. But Sargent follows earlier California cases, such as Walker v. Superior Court, 763 P.2d 852 (Cal. 1988), in concluding that, in passive cases, the defendant must have intended his conduct and been criminally negligent. That is not, as we will see next, a requirement of “specific intent.” But it is something more than merely “intent to do the act.” Can you explain why the court concluded that this additional negligence requirement is important to ensuring that only culpable, blameworthy actors are convicted in such cases?