Act
In order for an actus reus to be committed there has to have been an act. Various common law jurisdictions define act differently but generally, an act is a "bodily movement whether voluntary or involuntary." In Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a California law making it illegal to be a drug addict was unconstitutional because the mere status of being a drug addict was not an act and thus not criminal. Commentator Dennis Baker asserts: "Although lawyers find the expression actus reus convenient, it is misleading in one respect. It means not just the criminal act but all the external elements of an offence. Ordinarily, there is a criminal act, which is what makes the term actus reus generally acceptable. But there are crimes without an act, and therefore without an actus reus in the obvious meaning of that term. The expression “conduct” is more satisfactory, because wider; it covers not only an act but an omission, and (by a stretch) a bodily position. The conduct must sometimes take place in legally relevant circumstances. The relevant circumstances might include consent in the case of rape. The act of sexual intercourse becomes a wrongful act only if it is committed in circumstances where V does not consent. Other crimes require the act to produce a legally forbidden consequence. Such crimes are called result crimes. ... All that can truly be said, without exception, is that a crime requires some external state of affairs that can be categorized as criminal. What goes on inside a person’s head is never enough in itself to constitute a crime, even though it might be proved by a confession that is fully believed to be genuine."
An act can consist of commission, omission or possession.
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Famous quotes containing the word act:
“If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won’t. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterwards act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your better judgment.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)