Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/355/225/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 20:13:34+00:00

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A person cannot be punished for a notice offense unless it is probable that he or she knew or had reason to know of the law before engaging in criminal conduct.
Under Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 52.39, no convicted felon could stay in the city for more than five days without registering. Lambert, a convicted forger, stayed in Los Angeles for seven years without registering. She was convicted of violating the ordinance, even though she claimed that she was unaware of it. On appeal, she argued that due process under the Fourteenth Amendment required the ordinance to include some mental state element.
The prosecution would need to provide circumstantial evidence showing that the defendant should have been aware of the possibility that registration was required. There was no such evidence in this case, so the defendant did not have the opportunity to refrain from violating the law. Due process requires notice unless the defendant has actual knowledge of the ordinance that has been violated.
A mistake of law is usually not a defense to a crime. For example, a person may be convicted of drug possession even if he or she did not know that the particular substance was illegal. The penalty in this case, probation or a fine, is not grossly disproportionate to the offense such that it violates the Eighth Amendment.
This is a very rare example of when mistake of law is a criminal defense, and it should not be extended too far. This is effective only when there is a failure to act that happens in a situation when there are no circumstances that would make the defendant think that there was a need to act. Mistake of law is only available when a crime is highly technical and the behavior is not intuitively wrongful according to prevailing norms of morality.
Held: when applied to a person who.has no actual knowledge of his duty to register, and where no showing is made of the probability of such knowledge, this ordinance violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 355 U. S. 226-230.
"Any person who, subsequent to January 1, 1921, has been or hereafter is convicted of an offense punishable as a felony in the State of California, or who has been or who is hereafter convicted of any offense in any place other than the State of California, which offense, if committed in the State of California, would have been punishable as a felony."
Section 52.39 provides that it shall be unlawful for "any convicted person" to be or remain in Los Angeles for a period of more than five days without registering; it requires any person having a place of abode outside the city to register if he comes into the city on five occasions or more during a 30-day period; and it prescribes the information to be furnished the Chief of Police on registering.
Section 52.43(b) makes the failure to register a continuing offense, each day's failure constituting a separate offense.
asserted that § 52.39 of the Code denies her due process of law and other rights under the Federal Constitution unnecessary to enumerate. The trial court denied this objection. The case was tried to a jury, which found appellant guilty. The court fined her $250 and placed her on probation for three years. Appellant, renewing her constitutional objection, moved for arrest of judgment and a new trial. This motion was denied. On appeal, the constitutionality of the Code was again challenged. The Appellate Department of the Superior Court affirmed the judgment, holding there was no merit to the claim that the ordinance was unconstitutional. The case is here on appeal. 28 U.S.C. § 1257(2). We noted probable jurisdiction, 352 U.S. 914, and designated amicus curiae to appear in support of appellant. The case having been argued and reargued, we now hold that the registration provisions of the Code as sought to be applied here violate the Due Process requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The registration provision, carrying criminal penalties, applies if a person has been convicted "of an offense punishable as a felony in the State of California" or, in case he has been convicted in another State, if the offense "would have been punishable as a felony" had it been committee in California. No element of willfulness is, by terms, included in the ordinance, nor read into it by the California court as a condition necessary for a conviction.
We must assume that appellant had no actual knowledge of the requirement that she register under this ordinance, as she offered proof of this defense, which was refused. The question is whether a registration act of this character violates due process where it is applied to a person who has no actual knowledge of his duty to register, and where no showing is made of the probability of such knowledge.
We do not go with Blackstone in saying that "a vicious will" is necessary to constitute a crime, 4 Bl.Comm. *21, for conduct alone, without regard to the intent of the doer, is often sufficient. There is wide latitude in the lawmakers to declare an offense and to exclude elements of knowledge and diligence from its definition. See Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. United States, 220 U. S. 559, 220 U. S. 578. But we deal here with conduct that is wholly passive -- mere failure to register. It is unlike the commission of acts, or the failure to act under circumstances that should alert the doer to the consequences of his deed. Cf. Shevlin-Carpenter Co. v. Minnesota, 218 U. S. 57; United States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250; United States v. Dotterweich, 320 U. S. 277, 320 U. S. 284. The rule that "ignorance of the law will not excuse" (Shevlin-Carpenter Co. v. Minnesota, supra, at 218 U. S. 68) is deep in our law, as is the principle that, of all the powers of local government, the police power is "one of the least limitable." District of Columbia v. Brooke, 214 U. S. 138, 214 U. S. 149. On the other hand, due process places some limits on its exercise. Engrained in our concept of due process is the requirement of notice. Notice is sometimes essential so that the citizen has the chance to defend charges. Notice is required before property interests are disturbed, before assessments are made, before penalties are assessed. Notice is required in a myriad of situations where a penalty or forfeiture might be suffered for mere failure to act. Recent cases illustrating the point are Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306; Covey v. Town of Somers, 351 U. S. 141; Walker v. City of Hutchinson, 352 U. S. 112. These cases involved only property interests in civil litigation. But the principle is equally appropriate where a person, wholly passive and unaware of any wrongdoing, is brought to the bar of justice for condemnation in a criminal case.
"A law which punished conduct which would not be blameworthy in the average member of the community would be too severe for that community to bear."
with due process. Were it otherwise, the evil would be as great as it is when the law is written in print too fine to read or in a language foreign to the community.
MR. JUSTICE BURTON, dissents because he believes that, as applied to this appellant, the ordinance does not violate her constitutional rights.
* For a recent comprehensive review of these registration laws, see Note, 103 U. of Pa.L.Rev. 60 (1954).
"Many instances of this are to be found in regulatory measures in the exercise of what is called the police power, where the emphasis of the statute is evidently upon achievement of some social betterment rather than the punishment of the crimes as in cases of mala in se."
a law passed as an exercise of the State's "police power."* Considerations of hardship often lead courts, naturally enough, to attribute to a statute the requirement of a certain mental element -- some consciousness of wrongdoing and knowledge of the law's command -- as a matter of statutory construction. Then too, a cruelly disproportionate relation between what the law requires and the sanction for its disobedience may constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment as a cruel and unusual punishment, and, in respect to the States, even offend the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
"It is not intended to deny that criminal liability, as well as civil, is founded on blameworthiness. Such a denial would shock the moral sense of any civilized community; or, to put it another way, a law which punished conduct which would not be blameworthy in the average member of the community would be too severe for that community to bear."
If the generalization that underlies, and alone can justify, this decision were to be given its relevant scope, a whole volume of the United States Reports would be required to document in detail the legislation in this country that would fall or be impaired. I abstain from entering upon a consideration of such legislation, and adjudications upon it, because I feel confident that the present decision will turn out to be an isolated deviation from the strong current of precedents -- a derelict on the waters of the law. Accordingly, I content myself with dissenting.
* This case does not involve a person who, convicted of a crime in another jurisdiction, must decide whether he has been convicted of a crime that "would have been punishable as a felony" had it been committed in California. Appellant committed forgery in California, and was convicted under California law. Furthermore, she was convicted in Los Angeles itself, and there she resided for over seven years before the arrest leading to the present proceedings.

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 § 1257
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