Scheduled Maintenance Notice: H2O will be undergoing maintenance on Weds, July 30. Some features may be temporarily unavailable during this period. Thank you for your understanding.

Main Content

Casebook Read Credits
Criminal Law
Section 5 . 2 . 1
22 minutes

Actus Reus

Sam Kamin,
Dana Lindenberg

In a free society, thinking about committing a crime is not enough to make a defendant legally responsible for attempting it, or of committing any other crime. Rather, it must be shown that the defendant took some steps toward the commission of the offense (and, as we'll see, have a sufficiently culpable mental state). But just how far down the road from thinking about a crime to preparing to commit it, to actually committing it, must a defendant travel before it is fair to convict him of attempting to commit it?

This book, and all H2O books, are Creative Commons licensed for sharing and re-use with the exception of certain excerpts. Any excerpts from the Restatements of the Law, Principles of the Law, and the Model Penal Code are copyright by The American Law Institute. Excerpts are reproduced with permission, not as part of a Creative Commons license.