Court Opinion

ID: 9649942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:15:07.654044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:16.156538
License: Public Domain

STEADMAN, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I agree that under the circumstances here, the instructions were adequate to warrant affirmance. I think, however, that potential difficulty could be lessened by amplification of the statutory requirement (briefly discussed in footnote 1 of the per curiam opinion) that the defendant act “knowing or having reason to believe that the property was stolen,” D.C.Code § 22-3832 (1989).1 In my view, that requisite mental state should be interpreted and defined as a subjective one, focussing on the defendant’s actual state of mind, and not simply on what a reasonable person might have thought.2 This would comport with the specific intent requirement recognized in the per curiam opinion, as well as with the principle that neither simple negligence nor naivete ordinarily forms the basis of felony liability. See Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 251, 72 S.Ct. 240, 244, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952) (crimes tradi*127tionally are “generally constituted only from concurrence of an evil-meaning mind with an evil-doing hand”).

. The same requirement is set forth in the preceding section 3831, dealing with trafficking in stolen property, and is indeed the only provision in that section relating to a wrongful state of mind (in contrast to section 3832’s additional requirement that the defendant have the "intent to deprive another" of his property rights). Our decision in German v. United States, cited in footnote 1 of the per curiam opinion, interprets section 3831 and states that the "criminality of one’s behavior is sufficiently predictable under the 'reason to know’ standard because of the specific intent requirement.” 525 A.2d at 606. Such a criminal specific intent, however, can be found in the language of the statute only by construing the "reason to know” standard as a subjective one.

. Of course, the latter bears directly as evidence on the issue whether the defendant had a like state of mind. See Thomas v. United States, 557 A.2d 1296, 1300 (D.C.1989) (although a defendant must be subjectively aware of risk for a malicious destruction of property conviction, evidence that a reasonable person would have been aware of the risk is "often the best available evidence” of defendant awareness).