Criminal Fault, Intent and Defence Doctrines

Actio libera in causa (frequently abbreviated as a.l.i.c., Latin for "action free in its cause") is a law principle in a typical Western law system (both common law and civil law).

A castle doctrine, also known as a castle law or a defense of habitation law, is a legal doctrine that designates a person's abode or any legally occupied place (for example, an automobile or a home) as a place in which that person has protections and immunities permitting one, in certain circumstances, to use force (up to and including deadly force) to defend oneself against an intruder, free from legal prosecution for the consequences of the force used.

Colour of right, sometimes referred to as a claim of right, is the legal concept in common law countries of an accused's permission to the usage or conversion of an asset in the possession of another.

In law, the duty to retreat, or requirement of safe retreat, is a legal requirement in some jurisdictions that a threatened person cannot harm another in self-defense (especially lethal force) when it is possible instead to retreat to a place of safety.

Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a crime that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.

The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder: when someone is killed (regardless of intent to kill) in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime (called a felony in some jurisdictions), the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.

An impossibility defense is a criminal defense occasionally used when a defendant is accused of a criminal attempt that failed only because the crime was factually or legally impossible to commit.

Legal impossibility is a traditional common law defense to a charge of an attempted crime.

In criminal law, mens rea (; Law Latin for "guilty mind") is the mental state of a defendant who is accused of committing a crime.

The M'Naghten rule(s) (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, McNaughton) is/are a legal test defining the defence of insanity that was formulated by the House of Lords in 1843.

Preterintention (or preterintentionality) is a feature of criminal law in several legal traditions that describes a situation wherein a criminal perpetrator intends to commit a crime, but unintentionally commits a crime of greater severity than the one they originally intended.