The four real elements of a crime which all must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt

Gas station faces major backlash for unbelievable notice posted on door: ‘How could this possibly be legal?’

“When you think America can’t get any more ridiculous.”

Yahoo NewsJennifer Kodros

And get those bloody cop-calling gas station attendants off our property with their leftist religious nutjob guilt trips in court. The place is either open for business and posted as such or else it's closed and locked and the doors are barred. And if it's permanently out of business or under construction it will likely be fenced with "no trespassing" signs.

De minimis - Wikipedia

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First of all there must be a real violation (violatio rea) of the statute, (i.e., not merely violatio de minimus such as speeding slightly when overtaking or keeping up with motor vehicle traffic.)

Mens Rea

Mens Rea, or “guilty mind,” marks a central distinguishing feature of criminal law. An injury caused without mens rea might be grounds for civil liability but typically not for criminal. Criminal liability requires not only causing a prohibited harm or evil -- the “actus reus” of an offense -- but also a particular state of mind with regard to causing that harm or evil. For a phrase so central to criminal law, “mens rea” suffers from a surprising degree of confusion in its meaning. One source of confusion arises from the two distinct ways in which the phrase is used, in a broad sense and in a narrow sense. In its broad sense, “mens rea” is synonymous with a person’s blameworthiness, or more precisely, those conditions that make a person’s violation sufficiently blameworthy to merit the condemnation of criminal conviction. In this broad sense, the phrase includes all criminal law doctrines of blameworthiness -- mental requirements of an offense as well as excuse defenses such as insanity, immaturity, and duress, to name a few. This was a frequent usage of “mens rea” at common law. It remains common among nonlegal disciplines such as philosophy and psychology, perhaps because it captures in a single phrase criminal law’s focus on personal culpability. The modern meaning of mens rea, and the one common in legal usage today, is more narrow: Mens rea describes the state of mind or inattention that, together with its accompanying conduct, the criminal law defines as an offense. In more technical terms, the mens rea of an offense consists of those elements of the offense definition that describe the required mental state of the defendant at the time of the offense, but does not include excuse defenses or other doctrines outside the offense definition. To help distinguish this more narrow conception from the broader, the Model Penal Code drafters substitute the term “culpability” for “mens rea.” Thus, Model Penal Code section 2.02, governing the Code’s offense mental states, is titled “General Requirements of Culpability” and subsection (2), defining the offense mental elements employed by the Code, is titled “Kinds of Culpability.” Unfortunately, the term “culpability” has come to suffer some of the same confusion between broad and narrow meanings as the term “mens rea.” While most frequently used in its narrow sense, as interchangeable with “offense mental elements,” “culpability” is sometimes used in a broad sense, as interchangeable with

Penn Carey Law: Legal Scholarship RepositoryPaul H. Robinson

Second, the violation must be committed with "real intent" or "real meaning" or mens rea. (This is not a "guilty mind" as ignorant law professors and illiterate university frat boys commonly but wrongfully presume.) The term reus or rea in Latin means "real" or something that matters or is important as opposed to something de minimus or trifling. If you did something, (anything,) intentionally, and you realized what you were doing when you did it, then you had the mens rea in committing that act, or doing that deed, right or wrong, criminally or quite innocently, whatever you did.

actus reus

Wex - actus reus

LII / Legal Information InstituteLII

Third, a person must be found to have committed a real act in violation of some law or statute in order to be convicted of a crime. Merely possessing something or being found in possession of something, say guns, drugs, knives, explosives, alcoholic beverages, fine tobacco or marijuana, is not a real act. The defendant needs to have actually done something in particular in order to be considered to have violated some law or statute. Possession laws and statutorily inferred "intent" based on possession of something or some quantity of some substance fail the actus reus test for culpability in criminal matters. Merely possessing some "illegal" device or substance is not a real act or omission that may be prosecuted as a violation of the law. We as citizens cannot rightfully be burdened with any sort of duty to sort through all of our own possessions and dispose of any and all contraband.

Hate speech and real harm | United Nations

United NationsUnited Nations

REAL HARM collocation | meaning and examples of use

Examples of REAL HARM in a sentence, how to use it. 25 examples: This does very real harm. - Where is the real harm?

meaning and examples of use

The fourth element of crime that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt is that of real harm or noxa rea. There is not really any such thing as a victimless crime. We're back at de minimus statutory violations, if real harm does not result from a person's actions.

If harmless acts were to be prosecuted as crimes, then all respect for the law would quickly be lost, and this is indeed the case in many large "sanctuary cities" and "red-light districts" in the United States. The United Nations discussion (quite reasonably) addresses the concerns of words that never hurt versus sticks and stones that break bones, from a childhood playground perspective.