Whats the difference between motive and intention in law? Is intention like a higher threshold?
Motive is the reason behind the commission of the offense. It is largely irrelevant to proving whether the offense occurred. I say “largely” because there are some crimes such as “bias crimes” or “hate crimes” where the motive might be an element of the offense. But for most part, motive is something you hear on cop shows, not something a prosecutor would care about. Intent, on the other hand, is very important in criminal law. Many criminal offenses are defined so as to require a particular level of intent. In the U.S., the Model Penal Code defines various levels of intent that can be incorporated directly into the definition of a crime.
