Context: This is a world inhabited by intelligent, non-anthro animals, some of which have decided to outlaw hunting and eating prey in favour of living in harmony and cooperating.
They have a zero tolerance policy for predation and it is criminalized extremely heavily. Depending on what species or taxon you are (all animals have the right to be tried by members of their own species and taxa, and they are responsible for carrying out sentences of their own kind too), First Degree Predation, where you personally kill then eat an animal, is the only crime that formally carries the death penalty. Regular first degree murder where you "merely" kill an animal without intent to eat them only has a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. Second Degree Predation (aka Simple Predation) is where you obtain meat with the intention of eating it without personally killing anything, carries only a mandatory fixed term prison sentence in addition to losing certain freedoms post release.
However, their laws on the issue is very much based on intent as that is their philosophy, that because they are all sapient and no longer bound by their natural hunter instincts, they are responsible for their own actions. You don't have to actually eat the prey you killed to have committed First Degree Predation, and the inverse is technically true as well, where if you kill an animal for some other reason and only after they're dead do you decide to eat them, then you're technically only guilty of murder and Second Degree Predation instead of First Degree Predation. There are also legal ways that certain animals can obtain animal tissue, for example, as skin grafts and organ transplants, autopsy and forensic investigations, or for general research. Because animals handling tissue in these cases don't intend to eat it, it does not fall under Second Degree Predation. However, if you buy animal meat and later decide not to eat it, that's still considered predation.
Especially with the nature of eating and digesting food, law enforcement only has a very small time window to order a suspect to undergo lab testing of what's in their belly where it will actually show a positive hit for animal tissue, so my original thought is that the intent clause is meant to make prosecuting predation easier, since they wouldn't need to actually prove that the accused has animal tissue in their digestive tract at any point, just that they wanted at some point for some form of animal tissue to end up inside them.
I know there are many real life laws that use intent in a similar way, but I don't know how courts actually prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt. Can anyone who's delved more into the legal side of worldbuilding comment on how the courts in my world might prove (or disprove) that someone intended to eat another animal when they do not have direct evidence that the animal was indeed eaten?
I probably should have made it more clear, but if you kill an animal with intent that someone will eat it, not necessarily you, that's first degree predation and not just murder. Murder is only when you have no intention that the victim will be eaten.
They are pretty technologically advanced and the public is surveilled quite heavily. They also have a lot of forensic technologies like testing of stomach contents or scanning for the victim's DNA on and around the suspect. I imagine it would be similar to how we can convict someone of murder even without the body because the murderer disposed of it.
So in this world, is predation an urge that a predator species has to fight against (like in the manga/anime Beastars) or is the desire to hunt/eat meat just a craving like me wanting to eat a ham sandwich?
In theory they should not have cravings at all and those that do receive therapy to prevent them from acting on those cravings (just wanting to eat prey is not a crime obviously, and while it is still very socially taboo, the government's stance is that they would much rather animals feel safe to admit to their doctors and other officials these kinds of cravings without fear of being punished, since then they can treat them and actively prevent predation instead of prosecuting them after they've acted on those cravings). Actually, the main themes of this world are that the laws of nature are not set in stone, that intelligence and sapience give animals the faculties to override their basic instincts and be responsible for their actions, and that technology can liberate animals, even obligate carnivores, from the horrors of needing to kill to live.