Opinion ID: 1124484
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Theories of strict liability

Text: Over the years, several authorities have attempted to define the appropriate role and scope of the strict liability offense. In 1933, Professor Sayre catalogued all such crimes appearing in reports. His classifications include sales of alcohol to minors, alcoholics, Indians, soldiers, students and slaves; sales of impure foods, particularly milk and butter; sales of misbranded articles; and various automobile and traffic regulations. See Sayre, supra n. 11, at 84-87. However, Professor Sayre was unable to avoid employing the broad categories of Criminal Nuisances and General Police Regulations for the Safety, Health or Well-Being of the Community. He recommends that strict liability crimes be enforced with light penalties, though he concedes this limit has not been followed. Id. at 72, 79-82. He concludes with the generality that the abandonment of mens rea is suited to situations where the need for social order outweighs the need for individualized punishment. [13] Id. Some jurisdictions differentiate between offenses that are mala in se and mala prohibita, allowing strict liability only for the latter. See Sayre, supra n. 11, at 70 n. 55. Although this court has relied on this difference, these other jurisdictions' decisions are of little guidance to us, as we have drawn the opposite conclusion from the distinction. See Hentzner, 613 P.2d at 826 (separate intent element not necessary for offenses that are mala in se ). Generally, those courts that dispense with criminal intent for crimes that are mala prohibita, that is, not patently immoral, have followed the rationale that the legislature did not intend these new offenses to carry a mental element. The very meaning of malum prohibitum is that it is wrong because it is prohibited. Common law crimes, which by their nature are wrongful, require scienter because moral culpability is inherent to the offense. The courts have reasoned, however, that when conduct is penalized only because of a legislative command, then the nature of the proscription derives solely from that mandate. If the statute did not include a mental element, then the crime was not meant to have one. The malum in se/malum prohibitum distinction overlaps with another theme in this area, that of deference to legislative direction. Courts routinely hold that whether scienter is an element of a charged offense is a question of legislative intent to be construed by the Court. United States v. Balint, 258 U.S. 250, 252, 42 S.Ct. 301, 302, 66 L.Ed. 604 (1922). Even Morissette concedes that the concerns raised by the exclusion of mens rea would not justify judicial disregard of a clear command to that effect from Congress. Morissette, 342 U.S. at 254 n. 14, 72 S.Ct. at 245 n. 14. Compare State v. Rice, 626 P.2d 104, 108 (Alaska 1981). Since, by its terms, the malum prohibitum offense is a creature of statute rather than common law, it is here that courts will most often defer to legislative intent. Although widely accepted, the mala in se and legislative discretion approaches in our view remain unsatisfactory. We note that even crimes which had traditionally required proof of criminal intent have been recharacterized as strict liability crimes. See, e.g., McCutcheon, 69 Ill. at 601; Baltimore & Susqu. Steam Co., 13 Md. at 186. Nevertheless, we reject any rule that grants the legislature unbridled discretion to impose strict liability crimes. An exception to the mens rea requirement for clear legislative intent to the contrary has the potential to swallow the rule. As we said in Speidel, even where a statute is explicit, due process will on occasion require a higher degree of culpability. 460 P.2d at 80 (replacing the negligence threshold of AS 28.35.026 with a recklessness standard).