{"id":791,"date":"2012-05-05T15:26:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-05T19:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/?p=791"},"modified":"2012-07-21T10:22:20","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T14:22:20","slug":"mistake-of-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/","title":{"rendered":"Mistake of Fact Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Under the Common Law, if the crime only requires <em>general<\/em> intent, the defendant&#8217;s mistake must be reasonable for mistake of fact to be a valid defense. If the crime is a <em>specific<\/em> intent crime, the defendant&#8217;s mistake can be reasonable<em> or<\/em> unreasonable. This reasonableness is first a legal conclusion, then it goes to the jury to determine whether or not the mistake was reasonable.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>See <a title=\"General Intent Crimes List\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/general-intent-vs-specific-intent\/\">General Intent Crimes List<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Under the MPC Section 2.04, the defendant&#8217;s mistake must go towards negating the mens rea required for the crime. If the crime only requires general intent, the mens rea is going to default to recklessness.<\/p>\n<p>See <a title=\"Regina v. Prince, L.R. 2 Cr. Cas. Res. 154 (1875)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/regina-v-prince\/\">Regina v. Prince<\/a> for an example of mistake of fact.<\/p>\n<p>Compare to <a title=\"Mistake of Law\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-law\/\">Mistake of Law<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under the Common Law, if the crime only requires general intent, the defendant&#8217;s mistake must be reasonable for mistake of fact to be a valid defense. If the crime is a specific intent crime, the defendant&#8217;s mistake can be reasonable or unreasonable. This reasonableness is first a legal conclusion, then it goes to the jury &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mistake of Fact Defense&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[145,176],"tags":[172,162,163],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mistake of Fact Defense -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Under the Common Law, if the crime only requires general intent, the defendant&#039;s mistake must be reasonable.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mistake of Fact Defense -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Under the Common Law, if the crime only requires general intent, the defendant&#039;s mistake must be reasonable.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"MiB Law\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-05T19:26:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-07-21T14:22:20+00:00\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/\",\"name\":\"MiB Law\",\"description\":\"Lawschool Notes and Outlines\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/\",\"name\":\"Mistake of Fact Defense -\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-05T19:26:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-07-21T14:22:20+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/#\/schema\/person\/14950d73730da8ecbd5b2d2690155373\"},\"description\":\"Under the Common Law, if the crime only requires general intent, the defendant's mistake must be reasonable.\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/#\/schema\/person\/14950d73730da8ecbd5b2d2690155373\",\"name\":\"Andrew\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/1.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7e4456f2e886e2b22adb13ba439e70ed?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Andrew\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/miblaw\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}