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190

BRYAN v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

licensing requirement,10 but the judge rejected this request.
Instead, the trial judge gave this explanation of the term
“willfully”:

“A person acts willfully if he acts intentionally and pur-
posely and with the intent to do something the law for-
bids, that is, with the bad purpose to disobey or to disre-
gard the law. Now, the person need not be aware of the
speciﬁc law or rule that his conduct may be violating.
But he must act with the intent to do something that
the law forbids.” 11

Petitioner was found guilty on both counts. On appeal
he argued that the evidence was insufﬁcient because there
was no proof that he had knowledge of the federal licensing
requirement, and that the trial judge had erred by failing
to instruct the jury that such knowledge was an essential
element of the offense. The Court of Appeals afﬁrmed.
It concluded that the instructions
122 F. 3d 90 (CA2 1997).
were proper and that the Government had elicited “ample
proof ” that petitioner had acted willfully. App. 22.

Because the Eleventh Circuit has held that it is necessary
for the Government to prove that the defendant acted with
knowledge of the licensing requirement, United States v.
Sanchez-Corcino, 85 F. 3d 549, 553–554 (1996), we granted
certiorari to resolve the conﬂict.

522 U. S. 1024 (1997).

10 “KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAW
“The Federal Firearms Statute which the Defendant is charged with,
conspiracy to violate and with allegedly violated [sic], is a speciﬁc intent
statute. You must accordingly ﬁnd, beyond a reasonable doubt, that De-
fendant at all relevant times charged, acted with the knowledge that it
was unlawful to engage in the business of ﬁrearms distribution lawfully
purchased by a legally permissible transferee or gun purchaser.

.

.

.
“[Y]ou must be persuaded that with the actual knowledge of the federal
ﬁrearms licensing laws Defendant acted in knowing and intentional vio-
lation of them.” App. 17 (citing Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U. S. 135
(1994)).

.

.

11 App. 18–19.