Deontic epistemic stit logic distinguishing modes of mens rea

Most juridical systems contain the principle that an act is only unlawful if the agent conducting the act has a ‘guilty mind’ (‘mens rea’). Different law systems distinguish different modes of mens rea. For instance, American law distinguishes between ‘knowingly’ performing a criminal act, ‘recklessness’, ‘strict liability’, etc. This paper shows we can formalize several of these categories. The formalism used is a complete stit logic featuring operators for actions taking effect in next states, operators for S5-knowledge and operators for SDL-type obligation. The different modes of ‘mens rea’ correspond to the violation conditions of different types of obligation definable in the logic.