Intention Recklessness - Case Study Example

Intentionality in this case would depend largely upon the chance of death that Fabio was inflicting upon Alessandro. By the time the fourth bullet was in the gun Alessandro was more likely than not to kill himself with the next pull of the trigger. On the shot that actually killed him there was an 83.3% chance of Alessandro dying. Fabio committed an act that was likely to kill Alessandro. The fact that Alessandro "agreed" to the use of live bullets is irrelevant as a "reasonable man" would have known that the magician would have thought his manager was joking.

The act of changing the black bullets for live ones was the equivalent of tying Alessandro up and loading a gun with one bullet, firing it, loading it with another etc. Fabio could be rationally charged (and would probably be convicted) of the intentional murder of Alessandro as he clearly had the mens rea through the use of live bullets and the actual swapping of the blanks for the real bullets was the actus reus (Simester, 2004). He had the oblique intent to kill him if not the specific intent.

This case can be analyzed in three different stages. . A reasonable person should know that such an active would be likely to cause harm to someone if they were hit by the car. The fact that schizophrenia could have the effect of depriving a person of the ability to know the inherent risk of what he was doing begs the question of whether it did in this case. Part of Toby's statement in court, "he hadn't though about he risk of hurting anyone" would suggest that the mental disease did indeed diminish his capacity but the subsequent comment "that he didn't really care" would suggest that he had at least a sense of "right and wrong".

If a person states that they do not care about something there is the implication that they understand they should care. But this is Toby's state of mind in court, not at the time of the alleged offense. As he is a schizophrenic and as the court has accepted that this condition could cause him not to appreciate the risks involved with what he was doing, it seems that Toby did not recklessly cause Judy's injuries. There is sufficient doubt as to whether he could form the mens rea necessary at the time of the accident.

Question 3The fact that the Lords have attempted to give a satisfactory definition of "intention" on many occasions, the latest of which occurred in Woolin (1999) AC 82 HL does not necessarily render Williams' statement re. the impossibility of defining intention moot. In Woolin, a man killed his baby son while angry, throwing him onto a hard surface. The trial judge instructed the jury through a broad definition of intention, directing them that they could infer that Woolin had intended to kill his son if there was a "substantial risk" of injury.

Woolin was convicted,