In R v Saunders (1573) the defendant gave his wife an apple poisoned with arsenic, intending to kill her. Not knowing it was poisoned, she gave it to their daughter, who ate it and died. The defendant was convicted of the murder of his daughter on the basis of his intention to kill his wife. The case provides an early illustration of how the criminal law deals with unintended victims through the principle of transferred malice (or transferred mens rea).
According to the principle, where the defendant has the actus reus of an offence but their mens rea relates to an intended victim rather than the actual victim, the mens rea for the intended victim will provide the mens rea for the actual victim. Put another way, the effect is that ‘the intended victim and actual victim are treated as if they were one’ (Lord Musthill in Attorney General’s Reference No. 3 of 1994).
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