"The Pressing Need for Mens Rea Reform"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new "Legal Memorandum" authored by John Macolm, who is the Director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Here is the abstract and "Key Points" from this publication:

Abstract

One of the greatest safeguards against overcriminalization — the misuse and overuse of criminal laws and penalties to address societal problems — is ensuring that there is an adequate mens rea requirement in criminal laws.  Sentencing reform addresses how long people should serve once convicted, but mens rea reform addresses those who never should have been convicted in the first place: morally blameless people who unwittingly commit acts that turn out to be crimes and are prosecuted for those offenses rather than having the harms they caused addressed through the civil justice system.  Not only are their lives adversely affected, perhaps irreparably, but the public’s respect for the fairness and integrity of our criminal justice system is diminished.  That is something that should concern everyone.

Key Points

1 Nearly 5,000 federal criminal statutes are scattered throughout the U.S. Code, and an estimated 300,000 or more criminal regulatory offenses are buried in the Code of Federal Regulations.

2 Not even Congress or the Department of Justice knows precisely how many criminal laws and regulations currently exist.  Because many of them lack adequate (or even any) mens rea standards, innocent mistakes or accidents can become crimes.

3 Congress should pass a default mens rea provision that would apply to crimes in which no mens rea has been provided.  If a mens rea requirement is missing from a criminal statute or regulation, a default standard should automatically be inserted, unless Congress makes it clear in the statute itself that it intended to create a strict liability offense.