Strict liability offenses in criminal law

Liability

When a crime is committed, actus reus, police and other criminologists will need to find out who is responsible. According to the criminal justice system, if a person is accused of a crime, the people in positions of authority in that jurisdiction must determine how liable that suspect is for the actions that they have performed. Most suspects will be found to be of sound mind and therefore they are completely responsible for what they have done and will have to face the full penalty for their crimes. They will be found mens rea, meaning that the person was fully aware of the repercussions of their actions but chose to commit a crime anyway. Some people however are found to be unsound in terms of their mental faculties. These people will be considered less liable because a mental illness or sociological influences may have prevented them from understanding the full implications of their actions. The topic of liability is in the news recently partly due to the large number of mass shootings that have come of late. Criminologists and psychologists have tried to determine the level of liability these perpetrators have and the level of leniency that should be granted them based upon their mental states and life experiences.

In 2012 it seems that there were more mass shooting incidences than ever before. Crimes were committed in Colorado at a movie theater, at a mall in Oregon, and at an elementary school in Connecticut just to name a few. Many people have died because of these incidences and many more have been injured, most of them young people. One of the earliest last year was the case of seventeen-year-old T.J. Lane who perpetrated a school shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio where he fired ten shots which injured half a dozen students which took place on the 27th of February (Tavernise 2012). After confessing to the crime in court, psychologists brought up mitigating factors which they believe should be used to determine Lane's criminal liability and subsequent punishment.

There are several factors in this case which challenges the argument that Lane should be held completely liable for what he did. First of all, he was a minor at the time the crime was committed. In addition to this, T.J. Lane was noted to have had behavioral and psychological issues for some time. Chardon was a non-traditional school for troubled youth, young people who had already been in trouble with the law at some point in their short lives. T.J.'s upbringing was very violent. His father was arrested in the year 2002 for the attempted murder of the boy's mother and was sentenced to four years in jail, but only wound up serving a few months (Tavernise 2012). After this Lane's father was forbidden to have contact T.J.'s mother because of proven domestic abuse and, of course, the conviction for attempted murder against her. Psychologists have argued that it is likely that the violent life would have had an impact on the child's development, particularly as he was all of seven years old when the attempted murder occurred. The boy would have more than likely experienced or at the very least witnessed some of the abuse. He would also been made aware of the reasons for his father's departure. According to most criminologists and forensic psychologists, many children who are raised in a violent home will eventually commit violence themselves (Jones 2005). It is unknown how much psychological counseling T.J. had after his father was arrested or how much of the domestic abuse he was witness to or a victim of himself.