Judge Rejects Florida’s Drug Exception to Due Process
4th August 2011
Last week a federal judge in Orlando ruled that Florida’s Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention & Control Act violates the constitutional right to due process because it allows conviction without proof of mens rea, the “guilty mind” that is normally considered a crucial element of a criminal offense. The decision could have a sweeping impact, casting doubt on convictions under the law since 2002, when the statute was enacted in its current form. “It has one of the largest potential effects on criminal law in the past decade,” a local defense attorney told the St. Petersburg Times. “We’re talking hundreds of thousands of drug cases.”
Thank God. The trend toward removing the mens rea requirement from offenses was getting pretty ugly.