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2. Extortion
‘mens rea’ so that an over charge by an innocent mistake without a criminal negligence or intention will not constitute a criminal offence"167 .
2. Extortion
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If the unlawful exaction above mentioned is committed by means of threats or abuse of power, it is considered as extortion and the punishment is hard labour or imprisonment from thirteen months to three years.
The crime of "extortion" is therefore but only the same crime of unlawful exaction: only the means of perpetration are more aggravated. We have already seen that for the crime of unlawful exaction it is not necessary that the offender should have used any means of compulsion; the mere exaction is sufficient. As however the offender might have resorted to such means in order to attain his purpose, it was proper that the law should take account of these to aggravate the punishment.
Such aggravation arises where the defendant has used threats or abuse of power.
We have already had occasion to define the word “threats” in connection with other crimes. Any menace of an evil however conveyed to anyone and capable of intimidating him is a threat. And as in respect of this crime the object of the threat is to induce the person to give what he otherwise would not give, so any menace calculated to achieve this object is sufficient to constitute this element of the crime of extortion. The threat may be by words or by gestures and includes "not only threats of injury to persons or property, but menaces which would involve injury to a third person intended to be injured, and would induce the person to whom the menaces are addressed to part with money or valuable property"168 .
As to the "abuse of power", the unlawful exaction is in itself an abuse: but it is not of such abuse that the law speaks and which makes the unlawful exaction degenerate into extortion. This crime (extortion) presupposes a further abuse of power intended to facilitate the unlawful exaction. When, therefore, the public functionary avails himself for this purpose of the means which derive to him from his office; when in other words he proceeds to use those same means which the law provided for compelling
167 V. Harris "Principles and Practice of the Criminal Law", 115th Ed., pg. 74 168 Archbold, op. cit., pp. 707, 712
