Regarding your editorial “Chuck Grassley’s Guilty Politics” (Jan. 26): The House and Senate bills that you support would radically change fundamental principles of law. A person normally must intend to commit the acts that constitute a crime. But as the Supreme Court reaffirmed last June, this “is not to say that a defendant must know that his conduct is illegal before he may be found guilty.” Your editorial wrongly argues otherwise when referencing a nonexistent “Western legal tradition that a party must have wanted to break the law to be found guilty.” The pending bills would allow defendants to claim ignorance of...
Regarding your editorial “Chuck Grassley’s Guilty Politics” (Jan. 26): The House and Senate bills that you support would radically change fundamental principles of law. A person normally must intend to commit the acts that constitute a crime. But as the Supreme Court reaffirmed last June, this “is not to say that a defendant must know that his conduct is illegal before he may be found guilty.” Your editorial wrongly argues otherwise when referencing a nonexistent “Western legal tradition that a party must have wanted to break the law to be found guilty.” The pending bills would allow defendants to claim ignorance of the law as an excuse. And because a defendant need not know the law or intend to violate it, your reference to the number of new crimes on the books is irrelevant to criminal intent as it has always been understood.
Imposing a default standard for mens rea to thousands of existing crimes and elements of crimes would cause serious unintended consequences. It would create numerous new issues to litigate, and make obtaining pleas and convictions much harder in important cases. For instance, it would jeopardize prosecutions for terrorism, child pornography production and food safety. These are facts, not “scare tactics.” As the Journal reports, federal prosecutions for food contamination cases that don’t require intent have resulted in food companies stepping up efforts to prevent such contamination. That’s the whole point of such prosecutions, which bills like these would stop.
Instead, the sentencing bill I authored takes a more responsible step by directing all agencies to inventory crimes in the statutes and regulations they administer, identify the required intent and report the number of prosecutions. It isn’t even clear what problem supporters of these bills are addressing, as court records undermine the few anecdotal cases cited for supposed justification. I’ve offered to work on changing particular statutes that should be clearer, and am trying to find a middle ground, but supporters of the bills have refused so far to talk and are taking the bipartisan sentencing bill hostage unless their far-reaching bill is accepted as is.
In light of our hearing, and given that no Senate Democrat supports undermining fundamental principles of criminal intent, don’t be surprised if the House Democrats similarly refuse to support this bill as the process continues.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa)
Washington