First, the term “criminalization” means transforming a legal activity into an illegal activity, making it a criminal offense. The Latin term “Actus non facit reum, nisi men sit rea” means “an act does not make a man guilty of a crime unless his mind is also guilty” (Monaghan, Criminal Law, p. 21). This literally means that a criminal offense requires an Actus Reus (the guilty act) and a Men's Rea (the guilty mind) for there to be criminal liability. If the Actus Reus or Men's Rea is not present, you cannot find the offender guilty of an offense. This essay will specifically examine manslaughter of an unlawful act and determine whether it violates the legal principle that "no act is culpable unless the mind is culpable." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Manslaughter can be defined as the unlawful killing of a human being within the scope of the Queen's Peace, without malicious intent. Unlawful act manslaughter (also known as manslaughter (Storey, Unlawful and Dangerous, p143) occurs when a defendant intentionally commits an unlawful act which is dangerous and likely to cause injury to another person, resulting in thus the death of that person The offense of unlawful act manslaughter was defined by the Court of Appeal in the case of R v Larkin [1944] 29 Cr App R 18 (Monaghan, Criminal Law). p135). In this case, Larkin threatened another man at a party with a razor for talking to his. He claimed his drunken girlfriend swung at him and accidentally slit his throat. Larkin had committed an assault which resulted in death This was an unlawful criminal act Newbury & Jones [1977] AC 500. In this case, two fifteen-year-old boys pushed a paving stone onto the railway line. When a train approached, he hit the driver's windshield, killing him instantly. however, this was rejected because it was necessary to prove that all 4 elements of unlawful act manslaughter were present: the defendant's act must be intentional, the act must be illegal, the act must be objectively dangerous and must cause death. First, the defendant's act must be intentional, an omission will not suffice. In R v Lowe [1973] QB 702, the defendant neglected his child through disobedience, which resulted in the child's death. It remains unclear whether Lowe will be convicted of involuntary manslaughter based on intentional and deliberate omission. Second, the act must be illegal. The illegal act must be a criminal act; a civil wrong is not sufficient, as stated in the case of Franklin [1883] 15 Cox CC 163. In the case of R v Lamb [1967] 2 QB 981, Lamb and his friend were having fun with a gun without knowing that it was loaded. Lamb pointed the gun at his friend and pulled the trigger, killing him. It was concluded that Lamb did not commit an illegal act because pointing the gun at the friend did not constitute assault since the friend did not fear any violence. The case was canceled. Third, the act must be objectively dangerous. The test of this came from the case of R v Church [1966] 1 QB 59, in which a man beat a girl. He thought she was dead and threw her into a river where she drowned. It was understood in this case that the test of “dangerous” was whether a “sober and reasonable person” would have realized that their action was dangerous and that there was a risk of harm. A problem with this aspect of the law is that the courts apply an objective test to thesituation. The defendant will be guilty if a reasonable person realizes that it is dangerous and that there is a risk of harm. It doesn't matter that the accused himself didn't realize it was dangerous. Some feel that applying an objective standard is very harsh, because you are responsible for something that you may not have realized was going to happen. The rigor of the objective test is illustrated by the case of Elliot v C [1983] 1 WLR 939, in which a young girl with learning difficulties was convicted of an offense even though she did not realize she was taking a risk because a reasonable person would have realized that there was a risk. Objective tests, however, are much easier to prove and apply. In R v Dawson [1985] 81 Cr App R 150, causing fear was not considered "dangerous", even if it led to the victim having a heart attack and dying. The act was not dangerous because a reasonable person could not have been aware of the victim's bad heart and would not have seen a risk of physical harm. In R v Watson [1989] 1 WLR 684, however, the jury considered the burglary to be a dangerous act because the frailty of the elderly women was obvious to any reasonable person and there was therefore a risk of physical harm . The objective character The test can be criticized because it does not reflect the moral culpability of the defendant in convicting him due to the absence of evidence that he foresaw a risk of harm. Unlawful manslaughter is therefore considered unprincipled because it only requires that a foreseeable risk of causing harm be inherent in the accused's conduct when he is found guilty of actually committing caused death and also, to some extent, punished for doing so (Lawcom.gov .uk, 1965). The Irish Law Reform Commission (ILRC) has provided many solutions to the problems associated with unlawful manslaughter. CRVA believed that ordinary reasonable people would say, based on common sense, that pushing someone in the queue would not result in death. Ultimately, this led the ILRC to recommend the creation of a new offense, namely assault causing death (ACD), specifically for cases where a minor assault results in death and death must be “entirely foreseeable” in order to be charged with this offense (Mitchell, Criminal Law Review (2009)). Additionally, the act must cause death. There must be a causal link and no Novus actus interveniens. As long as the illegal act contributed significantly to the cause of the victim's death, the accused will be found guilty. Nor does it need to be aimed at the victim as seen in R v Mitchell [1983] QB 741, nor at a person as seen in R v Goodfellow [1986] 83 Cr App R 23 where the illegal act targeted the property. Additionally, another issue when it comes to unlawful act manslaughter usually involves drug-related cases. In R v Cato [1976] 1 WLR 110, the accused and the victim injected heroin. The victim died. Injecting heroin into the victim is considered an unlawful act of administering a harmful substance to the victim, contrary to section 23 of the Offenses Against the Person Act 1861. The accused was found guilty of manslaughter. Another drug case is R v Dalby [1982] 1 WLR 425, in which the accused supplied a drug to the victim into which he self-injected. The defendant's conviction for manslaughter was quashed because the act of supplying the drugs did not cause the?