Criminal
Law Class Notes
Look
at Model Penal Code § 2.02(9): this codifies, more or less, the common law idea
that generally knowledge of a law’s existence and understanding of its
meaning is not a required element of an offense, unless the statute
itself says to the contrary.
Put
this together with § 2.02(1): there must be a mens rea for each element
of the crime. In a sense, § 2.02(9)
makes an exception to this general rule.
In
short, you don’t have to prove that the defendant understood the law,
usually.
What
are the exceptions? § 2.04(1) says that
if the statute explicitly says you must know the law to be subject to it, then
fine. § 2.04(3) further says that you
may have a limited defense on the basis of your reliance on an official statement
of the law from an appropriate source.
This is a very limited exception, though.
However, § 2.04(3) does not
permit a defense based on your personal misunderstanding of the law. The defendant must reasonably rely on
an official statement of the law (from an appropriate, specified source) that
is afterward determined to be invalid.
Note
that in these areas, the Model Penal Code is more or less a restatement of common
law.
Hopkins,
the minister who puts up wedding signs, loses because his defense doesn’t meet
these criteria.
Dressler
says the federal criminal code is the pits.[1]
The
Weiss statute
There’s
something about the case of People v. Weiss that is different from People
v. Marrero. What’s that?
Weiss involves a small incident
in the Lindbergh kidnapping case. X
wanted to arrest someone for the kidnapping (it turned out it was the wrong
person). X needed help to make the
arrest and Weiss was a private citizen hanging out in the area. Officer X says to Weiss, “Help me!” Weiss says “Can I really do that?” X gave Weiss a little sheriff’s badge and
says “OK, now you’re a cop.” Weiss
thinks he has authority, but he really doesn’t.
Weiss is charged with kidnapping (really, being an accomplice).
Weiss
claims that he thought he had authority of law. How does Weiss’s mistake differ in character
from that of
Duress
might be relevant to the question of whether the mistake was reasonable.
Cheek
was charged with tax evasion and not filing tax returns. The mens rea term in the statute is “willfully”. Cheek claimed that he didn’t have to pay
taxes because “wages” are not “income”, or because the Sixteenth Amendment didn’t
apply, or some such crap.
In
essence, what is Cheek’s claim? Why didn’t
he have to pay income tax or file reports?
Why does he claim that his conviction should be overturned? He claims that he acted without the mens
rea of willfulness.
According
to the trial judge, under what circumstances should Cheek’s mistake of law
cause him to be acquitted? The judge
said that Cheek must have an honest and reasonable belief. The jury convicted him on this standard.
Cheek
claimed that his misunderstanding need only be honest, but not
necessarily reasonable.
What’s
different between Cheek’s mistake and
“Willfully”
can have many different meanings in different contexts. In this case, it means “voluntary,
intentional violation of a known legal duty”.
So
why does it follow that if Mr. Cheek honestly believed that he didn’t have any
taxes to pay, even if that belief was entirely unreasonable, that he should be acquitted
of the crime? If he didn’t believe it
was a legal duty, then he didn’t violate a known legal duty.
It
can be then argued that this is a specific intent crime in the sense of
a crime where you must know about an attendant circumstance, namely, that Cheek
has a legal duty.
Think
back to mistake of fact. The
first question to ask is whether you have a general intent, specific intent, or
strict liability crime.
This
tax statute is a specific intent crime.
The next question is whether or not the mistake relates to the specific
intent portion of the specific intent crime.
We may conclude that it does.
Cheek’s mistake relates to whether he did or did not have knowledge of
his legal duty.
What’s
the next question? Does this mistake of
fact negate this specific intent? Has
the prosecutor proven beyond a reasonable doubt this element of the crime?
We
are not interested in whether or not Cheek is culpable. That’s what we do in a general intent case.
The
question for the jury is whether or not Cheek violated a known legal
duty. If he didn’t know, he didn’t
violate a known legal duty, and thus he must be found not guilty. But the question of whether or not he knew
is a question of fact, and thus a question for the jury, if it had been
properly instructed in this case.
The
conviction was overturned and Cheek was retried. On the second trial, a correct instruction
was given and the jury convicted him again.
This goes to show that juries don’t have to believe defendants’ claims.
Congress
was not so concerned about the Cheek case that they wanted to go back and
change the statute. How come? Think about the politics. Most criminal laws apply only to bad
dudes. Tax laws apply to everybody. It would be politically unpopular to tighten
up tax laws and other white collar crime laws.
This
is not inconsistent with the Model Penal Code.
Look at § 2.04(1), which tells you that there’s an exception to the “ignorance
is no excuse” rule when the statute specifically says you must have knowledge,
recklessness, or negligence in regard to the law.
Let’s
pretend we’re Mr. Weiss’s attorney. Why
should my client be found not guilty of this crime in light of his mistake of
law? His intent was to cause the person
to be confined with authority of law, not without authority of
law.
Let’s
say we’re the prosecutor. What’s our
answer to that argument? We might argue
textually that the phrase “without authority of law” was set off by commas,
which often means that the preceding word “intent” does not apply to that
particular phrase.
At common
law, or in other words, if we’re not in a Model Penal Code jurisdiction, it’s ambiguous
whether a culpability or mens rea word modifies everything that comes
after or only some bits.
The
Model Penal Code § 2.02(3) and (4) makes life a lot easier, but it didn’t apply
in Weiss (in 1933 in
It
ended up that the textual arguments split the Court of Appeals of
[1] They tried to reform it with the Kennedy-Thurmond (!) Bill of 1968. In fact, it would have created an entirely new code and used many elements from the Model Penal Code. It was killed in committee by prosecutors and federal judges who basically wanted the status quo because they already knew how to use it. They didn’t want to have to learn anything new. The Washington Post killed the bill again based on their cynical belief that § 2.04(3) had been stuck in the bill to get Nixon off the hook.