Court Opinion

ID: 9729751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:48:06.229601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:01.019483
License: Public Domain

GILBERT, Justice
(concurring specially)-
I concur with the result reached by the majority. However, I write separately to emphasize my concern about the majority opinion’s new requirement that if the legislature intends to make a crime a strict liability offense, “it should say so directly and unequivocally.” This new requirement deviates from our longstanding precedent relating to strict liability crimes that requires only that there be clear legislative intent to dispense with mens rea, rather than requiring a direct and unequivocal statement of intent to create a strict liability offense. See State v. Neisen, 415 N.W.2d 326, 329 (Minn.1987). We have held that clear intent to create a strict liability offense can come from interpreting the statute as a whole, see State v. Loge, 608 N.W.2d 152, 155-56 (Minn.2000). While we were interpreting a misdemean- or statute in Loge, the requirement that intent be clear comes from Neisen, in which we stated the rule was particularly appropriate for “gross misdemeanor or felony liability.” 415 N.W.2d at 329. In effect and contrary to our precedent, the *811majority unnecessarily adopts a per se rule that absent a direct and unequivocal statement obviating the need to prove intent, no felony criminal statute can be interpreted to create a strict liability offense. This change in our law is an unnecessary departure where here, after looking for and failing to find an express statement, the majority engages in the very analysis which it declares is unnecessary: it looks at the statute as a whole and concludes that there is not clear legislative intent to enact a strict liability offense.