Actus reus
the guilty act
Where the phrase comes from
The external element of an offence: a voluntary act, an omission where a duty to act exists, or sometimes a state of affairs the statute describes.
What lawyers are pointing at
Thoughts are not the actus reus. A person who only considers an offence has not committed the external element. Where the law punishes an omission, it does so because a duty to act was already there: a parent, a contractual duty, a statute. The phrase is the 'what happened in the world' half of the analysis. It is not a conclusion that anyone is wicked.
The same shape in code
The request that was sent, the row that was deleted, and the binary that was shipped are the act. A comment that says 'we should delete this' is not the deletion. Incident reviews that argue from intent while the diff shows a different act are trying the wrong element.
A concrete picture
A statute makes it an offence to drive with a blood-alcohol level over a limit. The driving and the level are the external element. What the driver hoped would happen is a separate question.