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Mo. Rev. Stat. § 562.016

Culpable mental state

Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case FRANKLIN (1994)

Most recently applied in Sotnikau v. Lynch (January 2017)

Effective: 01 Jan 2017, 2 histories, see footnote; (L. 1977 S.B. 60, A.L. 2014 S.B. 491)

How often courts cite this section

199420002010201710
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

1. Except as provided in section 562.026, a person is not guilty of an offense unless he or she acts with a culpable mental state, that is, unless he or she acts purposely or knowingly or recklessly or with criminal negligence, as the statute defining the offense may require with respect to the conduct, the result thereof or the attendant circumstances which constitute the material elements of the crime.

2. A person "acts purposely", or with purpose, with respect to his or her conduct or to a result thereof when it is his or her conscious object to engage in that conduct or to cause that result.

3. A person "acts knowingly", or with knowledge:

(1) With respect to his or her conduct or to attendant circumstances when he or she is aware of the nature of his or her conduct or that those circumstances exist; or

(2) With respect to a result of his or her conduct when he or she is aware that his or her conduct is practically certain to cause that result.

4. A person "acts recklessly" or is reckless when he or she consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that circumstances exist or that a result will follow, and such disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation.

5. A person "acts with criminal negligence" or is criminally negligent when he or she fails to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that circumstances exist or a result will follow, and such failure constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation.

Official source: Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Missouri statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.