{
  "id": "R44464",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "R44464",
  "active": true,
  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
  "versions": [
    {
      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 451762,
      "date": "2016-04-14",
      "retrieved": "2016-05-24T19:21:44.820941",
      "title": "Mens Rea Reform: A Brief Overview ",
      "summary": "Criminal justice reform has played a major role in the congressional agenda over the past several Congresses, with sentencing reform bills making up the majority of the legislative action on this issue. However, some reformers have also highlighted the need to strengthen the mens rea requirements in federal law. Mens rea, Latin for \u201cguilty mind,\u201d is the mental state the government must prove to secure a conviction. For instance, some laws require that the prosecution demonstrate that the defendant intentionally have committed the act in question\u2014that is, committing the act with the conscious desire for the harmful conduct to occur\u2014while others require that the act be done knowingly or with reckless disregard of the harm it may pose. Some modern statutes require no mens rea at all; these are commonly referred to as strict liability offenses. \nUnlike the Model Penal Code, which includes four categories of \u201cculpability\u201d or moral blameworthiness, the Federal Criminal Code, found largely in Title 18, does not create uniform mens rea standards. Instead, each statute may or may not contain a mens rea element depending on the statute. Supplementing the statutory text, the Supreme Court has developed a set of presumptions to apply when a mens rea term is omitted. However, the Court has applied these rules in a somewhat ad hoc fashion depending on a variety of factors, including the origin of the offense in question (e.g., common law or statutory); the severity of the penalty imposed; and the purpose behind the law (e.g., penal or regulatory).\nIn an effort to bring greater clarity to this area of criminal law, Senator Orin Hatch and Representative James Sensenbrenner have introduced, respectively, the Mens Rea Reform Act of 2015 (S. 2298) and the Criminal Code Improvement Act of 2015 (H.R. 4002). Although they take different approaches, these bills aim to create a uniform mens rea standard across federal law. On January 20, 2016, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on S. 2298; no further action has been taken on this bill. The House Judiciary Committee held a markup of H.R. 4002 on November 18, 2015, and ordered the bill to be reported to the full House.\nSome have argued that strengthening federal mens rea standards would permit corporate actors to evade prosecution under federal statutes aimed at protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the citizenry\u2014including environmental and workplace laws. Proponents have countered that the bills are not designed to simply protect corporate wrongdoers, but are intended to ensure that any person is not prosecuted for a crime he did not intend to commit.\nTo provide context for this debate, this report provides a brief background on the history of mens rea, including an exploration of the Supreme Court\u2019s default mens rea rules; analyzes the various bills that intend to create new default rules; and applies these rules to various existing federal criminal offenses.",
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      "typeId": "REPORTS",
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      "topics": []
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  "topics": [
    "American Law"
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}