The meaning of knowledge as a criminal fault element: Is to know to believe?
Kris Gledhill
What the paper says
A common mens rea state in New Zealand's statutory criminal law is that conduct occur with knowledge of a circumstance or as to an outcome. In the absence of any statutory definition of 'knowledge', the courts have suggested that a belief - identified as a lesser state of certainty of awareness - will suffice. This article suggests that the case law from New Zealand is in error because it fails to take a step back and review Parliament's use of knowledge and belief and other states of awareness. It is apparent that legislators are aware that there is a difference between knowledge and such lesser states of awareness as belief, recklessness, suspicion. By itself, and also supported by principles such as lenity and the need for plain meanings in the criminal law, this means that legislators should be taken to mean knowledge when that is the word used. It is also suggested that this strict reading of knowledge is not a charter for villainy because evidential rules, including through the approach of wilful blindness, allow an inference of knowledge when a defendant denies anything beyond a suspicion or belief.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.00 × 0.4 = 0.00 |
| M · momentum | 0.20 × 0.15 = 0.03 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.