A defendant is criminally responsible for his action only if he is shown to have engaged in a guilty act—actus reus (eg for larceny, voluntarily taking someone else’s property without permission)—while possessing a guilty mind—mens rea (eg knowing that he had taken someone else’s property without permission, intending not to return it)—and lacking affirmative defenses […]

This paper states that it is inappropriate to build any implications for the free will and by extension to legal definition of criminal responsibility from the famous Libet’s experiment. However, even if we could take Libet’s results at face value, the paper shows that at least in the context of German law, the change in […]