| Court: | US Supreme Court |
| Facts: | Morissette, on a fruitless hunting trip over federal bombing range land, salvages 3 tons of apparently abandoned fake bomb cylinders worth $84. He is charged with theft, and the judge seems to feel that this is an incontrovertible fact, and tells the jury to find him guilty no matter whether they believe the prosecution or the defense. |
| Posture: | Initial verdict upheld on appeal, in spite of commentary that the trial judge overstepped his bounds, because the statute does not mention intent. |
| Issue: | If intent isn't listed as an element of a crime, does that mean the crime is strict liability? |
| Holding: | Reversed. |
| Rule: | Mens rea is required for all "infamous" (i.e., common-law) crimes. |
| Reasoning: | We do have some strict liability statutes, but these are for public welfare causes, to put people on notice that a high degree of care is required. To consider omission of intent from a statute to be an elimination of intent as an element of the crime would radically simplify prosecution, but to everyone's peril. |
| Dicta: | This would have been a "profoundly insignificant case," had it not been tried and submitted to the jury in the way that it was. |