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For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty.
The concept is known as mens rea...
In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent...
Under English common law principles, most U.S. criminal statutes traditionally required prosecutors not only to prove that defendants committed a bad act, but also that they also had bad intentions.
In a theft, don't merely show that the accused took someone's property, but also show that he or she knew it belonged to someone else...
In a 2009 Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the growth of federal criminal law, Rep. Bobby Scott (D., Va.)., said that mens rea had long served "an important role in protecting those who do not intend to commit wrongful or criminal acts from prosecution and conviction"...
In 1994, Congress rewrote part of the anti-money-laundering law that requires any cash transaction above $10,000 to be reported. The Supreme Court had just vacated a conviction, saying the "willful" provision required the government to show that someone knew he was violating the law when not reporting a transaction. In response, Congress took the "willful" provision out of the law.
An incident from 2002 illustrates the sometimes messy process of drafting legislation. That year, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which set new punishments for white-collar crime following the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other companies. Several legal experts were about to testify on key provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley before a Senate subcommittee when the chairman called a break in the meeting.
The reason: The senators needed to vote on the very provisions the panelists were there to discuss.
The hearing resumed two hours later, after the provisions were approved 97-0. The witnesses went on to testify about the dangers of weakening criminal-intent standards, as Sarbanes-Oxley did.
"That slapdash approach to drafting was pretty rife throughout the period," said Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law-school professor who advised the Senate Judiciary Committee during the bill's creation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...70801651620000.html?google_editors_picks=true
The concept is known as mens rea...
In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent...
Under English common law principles, most U.S. criminal statutes traditionally required prosecutors not only to prove that defendants committed a bad act, but also that they also had bad intentions.
In a theft, don't merely show that the accused took someone's property, but also show that he or she knew it belonged to someone else...
In a 2009 Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the growth of federal criminal law, Rep. Bobby Scott (D., Va.)., said that mens rea had long served "an important role in protecting those who do not intend to commit wrongful or criminal acts from prosecution and conviction"...
In 1994, Congress rewrote part of the anti-money-laundering law that requires any cash transaction above $10,000 to be reported. The Supreme Court had just vacated a conviction, saying the "willful" provision required the government to show that someone knew he was violating the law when not reporting a transaction. In response, Congress took the "willful" provision out of the law.
An incident from 2002 illustrates the sometimes messy process of drafting legislation. That year, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which set new punishments for white-collar crime following the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other companies. Several legal experts were about to testify on key provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley before a Senate subcommittee when the chairman called a break in the meeting.
The reason: The senators needed to vote on the very provisions the panelists were there to discuss.
The hearing resumed two hours later, after the provisions were approved 97-0. The witnesses went on to testify about the dangers of weakening criminal-intent standards, as Sarbanes-Oxley did.
"That slapdash approach to drafting was pretty rife throughout the period," said Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law-school professor who advised the Senate Judiciary Committee during the bill's creation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...70801651620000.html?google_editors_picks=true