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? . . .
UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe writes:
Nearly all of my law practice dealt with state law, and there was a vigorous line of case law striking down laws that were vague, overbroad and ambiguous. I continue to be amazed at the imprecision of federal statutes, and the courts’ willingness to do Congress’ work for it by “interpreting” such statutes in a way to make them pass muster. The problem with this, is that it allows the courts to place their own policy preferences in the interpretation, without too much concern about what Congress intended. Indeed, the way Congress passed its laws during the past 18 months left me wondering how the courts could ever divine legislative intent when most of the legislature had never read the bills it was passing. Nancy Pelosi’s statement that they had to pass the Health Care Reform bill so that we could find out what’s in it, betrays a conscious effort to avoid clarity, debate and discussion. It ought to be struck down on that basis alone.
The roles of the three branches have become seriously blurred as well through the growth of bureaucracies and “czars.”
I hope this line of criticism will take hold, because it points toward a restoration of the original Constitutional design.
Indeed.