In criminal law, intent is a subjective state of mind (mens rea) that must accompany the acts of certain crimes to constitute a violation.
Intent is defined in English law by the ruling in R v Mohan [1976] QB 1 as "the decision to bring about a prohibited consequence" (malum prohibitum).
[citation needed] A person who plans and executes a crime is considered, rightly or wrongly, a more serious danger to the public than one who acts spontaneously (perhaps because they are less likely to get caught), whether out of the sudden opportunity to steal, or out of anger to injure another.
The policy issue for those who administer the criminal justice system is that, when planning their actions, people may be aware of many probable and possible consequences.
For example, A, a jealous wife, discovers that her husband is having a sexual affair with B. Wishing only to drive B away from the neighbourhood, she goes to B's house one night, pours petrol on and sets fire to the front door.
The more certain the reasonable person would have been, the more justifiable it is to impute sufficient desire to convert what would otherwise only have been recklessness into intent to constitute the offence of murder.
For intention in English law, section 8 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 provides the frame in which the mens rea is assessed.
At times a forensic psychiatric examination may be helpful in ascertaining the presence or absence of mens rea in crimes which require specific intent.
The Court found that although the construction of the phrase suggests that Congress meant to provide "a federal penalty for only those carjackings in which the offender actually attempted to harm or kill the driver ... that a commonsense reading of the carjacking statute counsels that Congress intended to criminalize a broader scope of conduct than attempts to assault or kill in the course of automobile robberies".
[10] The Court, therefore, affirmed Holloway's conviction and held that a defendant's conditional intent may be an element of a federal crime depending on the context and purpose of the statute.
In many situations in the United States, a person is considered to have acted with intent if the definitions of purpose or knowledge are satisfied.