Caseflicks

Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit • 1985

United States v. Robert Wulff

758 F.2d 1121 | 1985 U.S. App. LEXIS 30555

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that Congress may not impose felony punishment and its enduring stigma for an MBTA violation without requiring proof that the defendant acted with some culpable mental state.

Background

A federal grand jury indicted Robert Wulff for selling migratory-bird parts in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). Wulff had sold a necklace made from red-tailed hawk and great-horned owl talons to an undercover Fish and Wildlife Service agent. Both birds were protected under the Act.

The indictment initially alleged that Wulff acted “knowingly,” but Wulff moved to strike that word because the MBTA's felony provision, 16 U.S.C. § 707(b)(2), did not expressly require scienter. The government agreed that knowledge was not an element. Wulff then argued that imposing a felony conviction without proof of guilty knowledge would violate Fifth Amendment due process.

The district court agreed. It concluded that the felony provision's maximum two-year prison term, $2,000 fine, and lasting stigma and civil consequences of felony status made strict liability constitutionally impermissible. After initially directing that any conviction be sentenced as a misdemeanor, the district court dismissed the felony indictment. The United States appealed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the MBTA felony provision, 16 U.S.C. § 707(b)(2), requires the government to prove that a defendant acted knowingly or with some other form of scienter.

Holding

No. The court held that Congress did not make scienter an element of the MBTA offense, including its felony sale provision.

Reasoning

Sixth Circuit precedent had already held that violations of the MBTA and its regulations are strict-liability offenses. Other federal courts had reached the same conclusion. Those earlier cases involved misdemeanor prosecutions, however, so the court did not disturb them.

Although courts sometimes infer a mens rea requirement into a statute that is silent on intent, that interpretive move is available when Congress borrows a crime from the common law. Selling protected migratory-bird parts is not a common-law offense, so the court concluded it could not save § 707(b)(2) by reading scienter into it.

The government's legislative-history argument did not resolve the constitutional problem. Even if Congress deliberately retained strict liability when it added the felony provision in 1960, the decisive question was whether a felony conviction without proof of culpable intent comports with due process.

Issue #2

Whether the Fifth Amendment permits a felony conviction under the MBTA's strict-liability sale provision when no scienter must be proved.

Holding

No. Applying § 707(b)(2) as a strict-liability felony provision violates due process.

Reasoning

The court drew on Morissette and Holdridge, which distinguish permissible public-welfare strict-liability offenses from more serious crimes. Strict liability is most defensible where the regulated conduct is a matter of policy, the defendant can reasonably prevent a violation through ordinary care, the penalty is relatively minor, and conviction does not seriously damage the offender's reputation.

The court treated the last two considerations as dispositive here. Section 707(b)(2) authorized up to two years' imprisonment, a $2,000 fine, or both. That was not a relatively small penalty of the kind historically associated with strict-liability regulatory offenses.

A felony conviction also gravely besmirches a person's reputation and carries serious collateral consequences. As the district court observed, a convicted felon may lose civil rights, including the right to serve on a jury and to possess a firearm. These harms are lasting and cannot be reconciled with punishment of a person who may have acted with a completely innocent state of mind.

Because the offense was unknown to the common law and imposed substantial punishment and felony stigma without requiring proof of any culpable mental state, due process required Congress to demand at least some degree of scienter. The court therefore affirmed dismissal of the felony indictment while leaving intact prior decisions treating MBTA misdemeanor violations as strict-liability offenses.