the defendant honestly believes that he is entitled to act in the way he did and this will negate the relevant mens rea element (e.g. of dishonesty under §2 Theft Act 1968). In Chamberlain v Lindon 1998 Lindon demolished a wall to protect a right-of-way, despite allowing nine months to pass before acting, Lindon honestly believed that it was immediately necessary to protect his legal rights without having to resort to civil litigation. For the purposes of §5(2): It is not necessary to decide whether Lindon’s action was justified as a matter of civil law. For the purpose of the criminal law, what matters is whether Lindon believed that his actions were reasonable, i.e. a subjective test. Since it was, the court was "on the facts found proved entitled to find that the Respondent had a lawful excuse for the purposes of section 5(2)(b) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971" and "on the facts found proved entitled to acquit [Lindon]" and "criminal proceedings were inappropriate. At worst a civil wrong had been committed, either nuisance by the appellant [Chamberlain] or trespass by the respondent [Lindon]. It should have been for the civil courts to decide which." Thus a lawful excuse may be acknowledged by a court to arise when a person honestly but mistakenly believes that the actions are necessary and reasonable. Mistake of non-governing law in the United States One narrow area of exception occurs where a person makes a mistake of non-governing law. While the accused are not pardoned for failure to know what acts have been deemed criminal, they may not be held to know of non-criminal provisions that affect the status of things that might therefore be deemed criminal. For example, suppose Jennifer is married to Phillip, but decides to get a divorce in order to marry Ben. However, Jennifer mistakenly believes that the divorce was final when she submitted the paperwork required by the state, and did not realize that she had to wait for a court to pronounce her divorced. In the interim, she marries Ben, and so is technically committing bigamy because she has married a second man before her divorce from the first was complete. Jennifer's mistake was not one of governing law (she did not mistakenly believe it was legal to be married to two people), but rather a mistake of non-governing law, which is akin to a mistake of fact.