Morissette v. United States
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| Morissette v. United States | |||||||||||||
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| Argued October 9 – 10, 1951 Decided January 7, 1952 |
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| Court membership | |||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices: Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Robert H. Jackson, Harold Hitz Burton, Tom C. Clark, Sherman Minton |
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| Majority by: Jackson Joined by: unanimous Minton took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. |
Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246 (1952), is a U.S. Supreme Court case, relevant to the legal topic of criminal intent.
[edit] Background
The defendant, a junk dealer, entered an air force bombing range, from which he collected spent bomb casings. These casings had been lying around for years. The defendant flattened and sold them at a junk market, earning a profit of $84. For this, the defendant was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. s. 641 which made it a crime to "knowingly convert" government property. The defendant conceded he had done the act. His sole defense was that he believed that the casings were abandoned property, and therefore there was no crime in taking them..[1]
After the trial, the trial judge instructed the jury with regard to the law. The trial judge rejected the defense. With regard to the intent requirement, "knowingly," the trial judge assumed Congress had meant for the statute to operate under a tort law definition of intent. The jury was required to find only that he "intentionally exercised dominion over the property." [2]
Thus, the jury was permitted to find the defendant guilty solely on the basis of his having taken some res. They need not have found, and were not entitled to consider, any belief he may have had with respect to the character of the res - that is, whether it was government property (which is clearly defined by the plain language of the statute as a crime), or abandoned property (which is not a crme). Were this reading of the statute correct, Congress would have created a strict liability crime.
The court of appeals affirmed. However, the Supreme Court, as final arbiter of Federal Law, heard an appeal and reversed.
[edit] References
- ^ Kadish, Sanford H. and Stephen J. Schulhofer (2001). "3", Criminal law and its process: cases and materials. New York, NY: Aspen, 237. ISBN 0-7355-1990-0.
- ^ Id. at 238.
[edit] External links
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