Talk:Strict liability (criminal)

Discrepancy?
From the "United States" section, we see:


 * the United States makes only the most minor crimes or infractions subject to strict liability

but shortly afterwards:


 * Another area where strict liability tends to show up is in drunk driving laws

and indeed shortly after that:


 * In many states, statutory rape is considered a strict liability offense.

I don't think many people would call drunk driving or statutory rape amongst "the most minor crimes or infractions". Loganberry (Talk) 23:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

It's also somewhat of a misnomer to say the United States as a whole - while there's certainly a federal criminal code, most crimes are prosecuted at the State level. Dart~Ben (talk) 16:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Paul Clarke. 2010 in UK
Soldier found gun and handed it into police. Guilty. 1 year suspended 1 year ref - Kittybrewster   &#9742;  23:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Manslaughter
I have removed the following passage, which I think is complete nonsense. However I'm not a lawyer so I'll move it here to see if anyone wants to defend it.
 * Another common strict liability felony is manslaughter, or accidental murder. Although there is no guilty mind in manslaughter (the very thing that separates it from murder), the fact that the negligent actions resulted in someone's death supersede any need for mens rea.

First of all, referring to manslaughter as "accidental murder" appears to be wrong. Manslaughter, as I understand it, is a category of criminal homicide that is not murder.

More seriously, manslaughter is not a pure accident. As I understand it, in most common-law jurisdictions, a purely accidental killing (say, a legal act performed with ordinary care that through misfortune results in the death of another) is no crime at all. Manslaughter is not a strict-liability offense, but rather one where the mens rea is something other than malice aforethought.

I invite comment from more expert editors. --Trovatore (talk) 08:57, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Genders in the "Sexual Offences Act 2003" section
Is it useful to state (as is currently the case) the gender of people involved in this case? Is it legally relevant? Apokrif (talk) 07:21, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Why wouldn't we mention them? We state the gender of parties in many other cases where it's not legally relevant either. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:09, 4 June 2021 (UTC)