ABILITY TO UNDERTAKE ACTION THAT CONSTITUTES A CRIMINAL OFFENCE; MENTAL CAPACITY AND GUILT

Abstract

In the paper the author offers an analysis, from the standpoint of legal theory, of the ability to undertake action that constitutes a criminal offence and the mental capacity, on one hand, and the mental capacity and the guilt, on the other hand.

In the first part of the paper the author pointed to the significance of the action that constitutes a criminal offence, than he set its minimal requirements without which existence of the actions, as an element of the general notion of the criminal offence, would not have existed. In the second part of his paper the author puts into correlation the ability to undertake criminal action and the mental capacity of the offender. The last part of the paper discuses a delimitation between the mental capacity and other integral parts of the guilt, as well as the correlation between mental capacity and the guilt as a higher theoretical notion.

His position presented in the paper could be demonstrated in two main conclusions. Firstly, the author concludes that the will, as a subjective element of the notion of the action, is immanent to every human being, where the subjective element of the notion of mental capacity is only possessed by mentally sound and mature persons. Secondly, the author concludes that since mental capacity is the ability to be guilty, the guilt is a relationship between the psychological being and the value judgment based on the presumption of the existence of mental capacity.