Dolahak and its discoursing of 'Actus Reus' and 'Mens Rea'

By Dilshan BOANGE

US playwright Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men has enjoyed a Sri Lankan embrace from theatre goers in Colombo who have shown positive responses to Dolahak -the Sinhala adaptation of Rose's play produced and directed by Athula Pathirna whose directorial debut has received a remarkable reception since it first went on the boards late last year.

The story in a nutshell (of nutshells) is about the deliberation of a jury of twelve men over the guilt or innocence of a sixteen-year-old boy charged with first degree murder, and the victim being the boy's own father. The ensemble of characters had a captivating mix of emotions spiralling in many directions, the most forceful and projectile portrayals being delivered mainly by W. Jayasiri, Dhamapriya Dias, Sampath Jayasinghe and Vishvajith Gunasekera.

Trial by jury

The system of 'trial by jury' where laymen sit in judgement over a person charged with wrongdoing shows a method of being judged by one's peers who would be better able to decide from a more 'societal vantage' on the possibility of guilt or innocence of the person standing trial. In a murder case the guilt of the accused must be proven beyond reasonable doubt. And for a crime to be established as having been done, two essential elements need to be established 'beyond reasonable doubt' according to principles of criminal law. These two principles are -Actus reus and Mens reas which basically translate as 'wrongful act' and 'wrongful mind' respectively. For a 'murder' to have been committed in the eyes of the law the accused must be proven of having performed an act that results in the death of a person as well as having done that act with the intention of causing the death of the deceased or killed person.

Which comes first?

What I find interesting in the manner in which the jury deliberates is that it deals with the gamut of human emotions and perspectives that each juror brings in to form his stance on the matter and (its subsequent change) how the one voice of logic (the juror played by Vishwajith G) that sets the ball rolling sets the stage for a layman discourse to deal with the concepts of the two principles of - Actus Reus and Mens Reas.

The motive for the boy to have committed the murder goes into the aspect of Mens Rea that leads the discussion to dwell into how the criminal intention of killing the father would have occurred and of course the physical act of killing is the 'seemingly factual' stabbing done by the accused.

In establishing a crime as a murder the accused must first be proven of having fulfilled the first of the two ingredients Actus Reus; if that cannot be established beyond reasonable doubt then there is no grounds on which the accused can be declared guilty.

The father's boy had been stabbed to death that much was obvious and established the murder weapon, a switch blade, was also at the scene of the crime but without any fingerprints and identified as the same type of blade the boy had bought from a wayside vendor which he claims he had lost. Interestingly, the evidence brought forward by the prosecution at the trial had convinced all but one of the jurors that the boy was first and foremost guilty of Actus Reus -the wrongful act.

The stabbing is attributed to the boy (the accused) yet it is through looking more closely at the factors that would link up to whether if the boy was guilty of Mens Rea or whether there is really a basis for Mens Rea that the highly contentious deliberative process unfolds.

The possible motive to kill

Many of the jurors take into consideration the fact that the boy was slapped by the father and the statement of the witness who said he heard the boy yell out Mama tho maranawa! (I am going to kill you) as sufficient reason for the boy to have been of a state of mind to commit the murder.

Upon clearly examining the facts the doubtfulness of whether this claimed yell could have actually been heard by the witness who would have had to have heard it over the noise of a moving train that passed outside the building the crime occurred creates room for sufficient doubt to brew in the minds of some of the jurors if in fact Actus Reus could be attributed to the boy.

True that the father had been stabbed to death, yet to accuse the boy of having done it doesn't seem so clear cut when re-examining the witness testimonies, one of which is from the occupant living in the apartment just above the flat where the crime occurred.

And the other, an eyewitness account from the old woman who claims she had seen the crime occur from her apartment across the railroad (directly opposite the flat the boy and the father inhabited) through the open windows of the last two carriages of the moving train also is argued out as being implausible due to the fact that she showed signs of being a person who wears spectacles and would have been unlikely to have had her spectacles on to see the incident clearly enough to know the assailant as being the boy himself since she had said she was trying to get to sleep and happened to be in bed when she heard the commotion erupt.

Upon re-examination of the evidence

The jurors as laymen, examine the case and the evidence presented for its logicalness systematically, amidst certain prejudices and emotional turbulences which sought to establish Actus Reus as performed by the boy based on a supposition that Mens Rea is more or less obvious from the outset.

Finally, the dubiety in the two testimonies becomes visible and the factualness of the 'evidence' creates room for obvious doubt (more than merely 'reasonable') to stir up and question whether the boy can be found guilty of having committed the crime. What can be understood here from a point of dissecting the discourse in comection with the earlier mentioned criminal law principles is that the jury feels Actus Reus cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt and therefore the boy's acquittal is a unanimous decision.

A theatrical critique of society

What one can find interesting in this US play written in the 50s is that it sends out undertones of class based prejudices prevalent in that society which some may have seen as warfare to a certain extent between the downtrodden ghetto stratum and the lower middle class and above.

While the scenario with a jury can be a window for society to see how their own (possibly) treat a civic duty where the life of another hangs at stake, it also creates the two fold view -one is a pessimism of how crude and thoughtless people may be and not care to look beyond what may seem the obvious, not wanting to tire themselves and have things done and over with to their convenience.

And the other is that a ray of optimism that comes out in the character played by VG that says out there are also people who care enough for both people and the duty entrusted to him by society to see how best he would be able to aid the process of justice.