Opinion ID: 203934
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Scienter & Criminality

Text: The third and fifth Mendoza-Martinez factors, whether the challenged sanction comes into place only on a finding of scienter, and relatedly, whether the behavior to which it applies is already a crime, weigh heavily in favor of concluding that Article 120 is a penal statute. See id. at 168, 83 S.Ct. 554. First of all, the disciplinary sanction here [is] triggered by a criminal conviction which incorporate[s] a finding of criminal intent, and so the disciplinary sanction came into play `only on a finding of scienter,' Porter v. Coughlin, 421 F.3d 141, 147 (2d Cir.2005) (quoting Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. at 168, 83 S.Ct. 554). Similarly, as Article 120 applies only to persons who have already been convicted of a felony, the behavior to which it applies is [undoubtedly] already a crime, as the fifth Mendoza-Martinez factor requires. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. at 168, 83 S.Ct. 554; see also Dep't of Revenue of Montana v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U.S. 767, 781, 114 S.Ct. 1937, 128 L.Ed.2d 767 (1994) (noting that fact that a tax on marijuana was conditioned on the commission of a crime is `significant of [its] penal and prohibitory intent').