The Criminal Should Have A Guilty Mind In Oedipus The King

Good morning, members of the jury, court, and council. Many of you know the meaning behind the word crime. You all recognize that it is an action or omission that constitutes an offense. Some of you have may have seen a crime being committed and if not, certainly on the news. These crimes all have one similarity to them; most of them were intentional. Criminal intent is a necessary component of a "conventional" crime and involves a conscious decision on the part of one party to injure or deprive another. This is one of the three categories of “mens rea,” the basis for the establishment of guild in a criminal case. The criminal should have a guilty mind when he commits the crime. My client, Oedipus, has been charged on the account of patricide against his father and incest with his mother. Although the evidence has showed that my client has indeed committed these crimes, he should be acquitted because he was not aware and did not have a guilty mind when he
Because of this excessive pride, he didn’t let King Laius pass through first and this led to the domino of tragedies. Although Oedipus may have some qualities of hubris, he also has a deep care for his people. When the leader of the chorus in Thebes was testifying, he remembered Oedipus telling the city encouraging words when they were under the plague. In his testimony, the leader recalls Oedipus saying, “Your pain strikes each of you alone, each in the confines of himself, no other. But my spirit grieves for the city, for myself, and all of you. I wasn’t sleeping, dreaming. I have wept through the nights, you must know that, groping, laboring over many paths of thought” (Oedipus Rex 74-79). He was not one dimensional excessively proud, he was complex in his pride but he was also deeply loyal to his people and to the well-being of his