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REPORT: CONGRESS MAKES TOO MANY VAGUE LAWS. A conservative think tank and criminal defense lawye?

By Glenn Reynolds

REPORT: CONGRESS MAKES TOO MANY VAGUE LAWS.

A conservative think tank and criminal defense lawyers are forming an unusual alliance to try to get Congress to quit writing criminal laws so loosely that they subject innocent people to unjust prosecution and prison.

A new study by the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers finds that nearly two dozen federal laws enacted in 2005 and 2006 to combat nonviolent crime lack an adequate provision that someone accused of violating the laws must have had a “guilty mind,” or criminal intent. “It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that, before criminal punishment can be imposed, the government must prove both a guilty act and a guilty mind,” the groups said in the report.

Even when Congress includes a “guilty mind” provision in a law, “it is often so weak that it does not protect defendants from punishment for making honest mistakes,” or committing minor transgressions, the report said.

And courts have been extraordinarily lax in regulating these things. The rule of lenity should be applied with severity, and laws regulating malum prohibitum should be viewed with deep suspicion. And prosecutors should be held much more accountable for overreaching or incompetence. Perhaps, in every criminal case, the question should be put to the jury whether the prosecution acted unfairly, with a “yes” vote resulting in sanctions? . . .

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on May 04, 2010 (boomark / email).