Murder of Eve Carson - Essay Example

Demario James Atwater, a 21-year-old resident of Durham, North Carolina was charged with her murder. A second suspect, 17-year-old Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr. was taken into custody early morning March 13, 2008. According to a confidential informant to Chapel Hill police, both Atwater and Lovette shot her. The two suspects took Ms. Carson from her home and departed in her Toyota Highlander for an A.T.M. before shooting her to death in a street near her home. Details in six warrants confirm that the murder suspects withdrew $1,400 from ATMs using Carsons card over a two-day period after the shooting.

Atwater admitted to being the suspect attempting to use the ATM card in a security video taken in a local convenience store and that Lovette was indeed the person pictured in original ATM surveillance photograph (Nizza, 2008). It is simply an act accompanied by specified circumstances and an essential element of a crime that must be proved to secure a conviction. The actus reus of the current event involved robbing and killing Eve Carson. It is important to note that the suspects could not be punished for thinking criminal thoughts but for voluntarily acting upon those ideas.

This refers to the mental intention or the defendants state of mind at the time of the offense. It is the mental component of criminal liability, which is a necessary component in order to prove that a criminal act has been committed. The mens rea of the current event was the suspects’ intent to rob and kill Eve Carson. Before conviction, the prosecution must prove not only that the accused committed the offence but also that the act was voluntary or purposeful. For criminal liability to occur, mens rea and actus reus must occur at the same time, a phenomenon called concurrence.

The criminal intent must precede or coexist with the criminal act, or in some way activate the act. This current event was overt and voluntary. Causation is