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Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law
Reestablishing A Knowledge Mens Rea Requirement For Armed Career Criminal Act "Violent Felonies" Post-Voisine, Jeffrey A. Turner
Reestablishing A Knowledge Mens Rea Requirement For Armed Career Criminal Act "Violent Felonies" Post-Voisine, Jeffrey A. Turner
Vanderbilt Law Review
Until 2016, federal courts unanimously concluded that predicate offenses for the Armed Career Criminal Act ('ACCA") required a knowledge mens rea. Therefore, any state law crimes that could be com- mitted with a reckless mens rea were not "violent felonies" and could not serve as ACCA predicates. In 2016, however, the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Voisine v. United States disrupted that lower court consensus. The Court stated that a reckless mens rea was sufficient to violate 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), which bars individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence offenses from possessing firearms.
The ACCA's language is similar to § …
The Language Of Mens Rea, Owen D. Jones, Matthew R. Ginther, Francis X. Shen, Richard J. Bonnie, Morris B. Hoffman, Rene Marois, Kenneth W. Simons
The Language Of Mens Rea, Owen D. Jones, Matthew R. Ginther, Francis X. Shen, Richard J. Bonnie, Morris B. Hoffman, Rene Marois, Kenneth W. Simons
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
To be guilty of a crime, generally one must commit a bad act while in a culpable state of mind. But the language used to define, partition, and communicate the variety of culpable mental states (in Latin, mens rea) is crucially important. For depending on the mental state that juries attribute to him, a defendant can be convicted-for the very same act and the very same consequence-of different crimes, each with different sentences.
The influential Model Penal Code ("MPC") of 1962 divided culpable mental states into four now-familiar kinds: purposeful, knowing, reckless, and negligent.' Both before the MPC and since, …
Humpty Dumpty On Mens Rea Standards: A Proposed Methodology For Interpretation, Katherine R. Tromble
Humpty Dumpty On Mens Rea Standards: A Proposed Methodology For Interpretation, Katherine R. Tromble
Vanderbilt Law Review
"When I use a word.., it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.", This statement by Humpty Dumpty sets forth the argument of this Note: words used to describe mens rea in federal criminal statutes have plain, ordinary meanings. When the United States Supreme Court interprets these statutes, it should do so according to the words' plain meanings. Because the Court has not used this approach in past cases, the law of mens rea on the federal level is confusing and inconsistent.
The Court has tried to repair poorly drafted statutes by interpreting them in various …