Last week Trump issued this executive order that seems pretty important to me, but isn't getting much press as far as I can tell.
The overcriminalization of regulations has been a persistent problem for some years now, with lots of legal commentators calling for some action to rein in the practice of the Executive branch both making rules and setting criminal punishments for those rules.
What does this do? The most important part is that every agency has 365 days to list out all the regulations that have a criminal penalty and then that report has to be made public. Right now, there is literally no one on this planet that knows this information. No one.
All future regs have to state criminal offenses clearly. Mens rea is back on the menu! The default will be to require mens rea. What that means in English is that you have to know you are committing a crime, strict liability is highly disfavored.
Mens rea means guilty mind. It is the doctrine that you have to have criminal intent to be charged with a crime. Let's say you grab a coat off a rack. If you thought it was your coat, that's not theft, that's a mistake. Strict liability means if you take the coat, you're guilty no matter what. Substantial portions of regs with criminal penalties attached are strict liability. Did you do the action? You are criminally liable, even if you did not know the reg existed and you had no criminal intent.
This EO is tremendously important and will have direct, and hopefully immediate, affect on more or less everyone in America. And did you hear anything about it? Anything at all?
This is one of my areas of keen interest and I missed this. This should be being shouted from the mountain tops as to how it is restoring the rights of Americans to know when they will be criminally charged, for what, and that you can't be held criminally liable for a mistake.
Posted by Asangkt358