Opinion ID: 1124484
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The strict liability tradition

Text: The rule that a criminal offense exists at the intersection of a guilty act and a guilty mind is commonly viewed as the bedrock of criminal common law. Over two centuries ago, Blackstone wrote, [T]o constitute a crime against human laws, there must first be a vicious will, and secondly an unlawful act consequent upon such a vicious will. 4 Comm. 21. A century and a half later Bishop affirmed: There can be no crime large or small without an evil mind. 1 Bishop, Criminal Law (9th ed. 1930) § 287. [7] Yet throughout our common law history, a parallel tradition has allowed imposition of penalties without formal proof of criminal intent. An early version of strict liability, the law of deodands, has been traced back to early Western history. A deodand was an object that was forfeited to the Crown for directly or indirectly causing the death of a human being. See generally, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law 24-25 (1881). The original reasoning was that the instrument itself was guilty of the offense. Although the deodand form was abolished in England in 1846, 9 & 10 Vict. c. 62, and never was incorporated into the American common law, see Parker-Harris Co. v. Tate, 135 Tenn. 509, 188 S.W. 54 (1916), its substance survives in contemporary in rem proceedings. The object itself, rather than its human owner, is formally charged. See, e.g., One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U.S. 693, 85 S.Ct. 1246, 14 L.Ed.2d 170 (1965); United States v. 43 Gallons of Whiskey, 93 U.S. 188, 23 L.Ed. 846 (1876); United States v. 1960 Bags of Coffee, 12 U.S.(8 Cranch) 398, 3 L.Ed. 602 (1814). The Supreme Court of the United States has recently affirmed that proof of the moral culpability of the owner is not a necessary predicate to these punitive forfeitures. See Bennis v. Michigan, 516 U.S. 442, 116 S.Ct. 994, 134 L.Ed.2d 68 (1996). Bennis upheld a modern-day deodand of sorts, allowing the state to seize and forfeit an automobile without any showing that the owner knew her husband might use the vehicle to solicit prostitutes. Id. In the same year the deodand rule was repealed in England, a new practice began to develop in its place on both sides of the Atlantic. In Regina v. Woodrow, 15 M. & M. 404 (Exch. 1846), the Court of Exchequer allowed the imposition of a £ 200 fine on a tobacco dealer for possession of adulterated tobacco, without evidence the dealer had knowledge or cause to suspect the product's condition. Per Pollock, C.B., at 415, 416. The case was reaffirmed in Regina v. Stephens, L.R. 1 Q.B. 702 (1886). The Court accepted that a new class of offenses without a mens rea element had come into being. While many of these statutes were a product of technological change [8] or modern sensibilities, [9] and thus had no common law antecedent, others overlaid old crimes which had once included an intent element. [10] The Court summed up the development in Cundy v. LeCocq, L.R. 13 Q.B.D. 207 (1884): In old time, and as applicable to the common law or to earlier statutes the maxim [that in every criminal offense there must be a guilty mind] may have been of general application; but a difference has arisen owing to the greater precision of modern statutes. It is impossible now ... to apply the maxim generally to all statutes, and the substance of all the reported cases is that it is necessary to look at the object of each Act that is under consideration to see whether and how far knowledge is of the essence of the offence created. Id. at 210 (Stephen, J.) (upholding strict liability conviction for selling alcohol to an intoxicated person). On this shore, courts also began to allow penalties for certain offenses without proof of intent during this era. The practice first took root in Massachusetts, apparently quite independently of the English cases, and spread quickly from there. [11] Again, crimes which had recently required criminal intent could now be punished without it. [12]