Preterintention

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Preterintention in criminal law is a degree of culpability in which a defendant intended to commit a crime but also unintentionally committed a more serious crime. It derives from the legal Latin phrase praeter intentionem, which means "beyond intention".^[1] Preterintentional crimes or offenses may also be referred to as result-conditioned or consequentially aggravated. A common form of preterintentional crime is bodily harm resulting in death, in which the defendant intended to harm the victim but did not intend to kill.

Preterintentional crime as a distinct legal concept is found chiefly in penal systems of the civil law tradition. It arises from the Roman legal principle under which a criminal intent created strict criminal liability for all resulting harm,^[2] which is often known by the maxim versari in re illicita. In modern times many legal systems have ceased to impose separate criminal liability for preterintentional crimes. Other legal systems have limited a defendant's criminal liability to situations where the defendant negligently or recklessly caused the preterintentional harm.

Penal systems of the common law tradition generally do not use the concept of preterintentionality, but some common law systems impose criminal penalties for unintended harms under doctrines such as felony murder.