{"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":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,176],"tags":[172,162,163],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-law","category-key-concepts-criminal-law","tag-criminal-defense","tag-mistake-of-fact","tag-mistake-of-law"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mistake of Fact Defense -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Under the Common Law, if the crime only requires 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