Federal criminal charges are accusations filed in federal court, by a federal grand jury or federal prosecutor, asserting that a particular person or entity has violated a federal law, which carries penal sanctions. Federal criminal charges are relatively rare as the vast majority of crimes in the United States are prosecuted under state law, in state courts. Nevertheless, federal criminal charges have commanded sustained public and scholarly attention. This article briefly surveys the history and evolution of federal criminal enforcement and highlights major debates in the field surrounding enforcement, sentencing, and the concept of mens rea (i.e., requisite mental state of the accused with regard to awareness of wrongdoing for the alleged criminal act).
History
In the early years of the U.S. republic, federal criminal offenses were limited in scope. They encompassed primarily offenses against the federal government, such as treason and bribery. With the rise of industrialization, urbanization, and interstate transportation in the 19th century, however, Congress increasingly used its legislative powers to criminalize public order as well as economic and social welfare offenses. Federal criminal lawmaking become even more expansive in the 20th century, aided by a series of New Deal– era Supreme Court decisions interpreting Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce broadly. This expansion was further spurred on in the latter quarter of the 20th century by rising crime rates and the perceived inadequacy of state and local enforcement to respond. By the dawn of the 21st century, estimates pegged the number of federal crimes at well over 4,000, though no official tally exists.
Yet while federal criminal law has grown exponentially, federal criminal enforcement remains relatively circumscribed. Congressional appropriations, administration priorities, and the relatively few federal courts, prosecutors, and law enforcement agents serve as functional limits on the scope and nature of federal criminal charges. As a result, federal criminal enforcement is focused primarily on drug trafficking, immigration-related crimes, financial frauds, crimes concerning firearms, and national security offenses.
Major Debates: Enforcement, Sentencing, and Mens Rea
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, scholarly and public attention to federal criminal enforcement has revolved primarily around three primary areas: enforcement patterns, sentencing, and mens rea.
Enforcement Patterns
Since the 1980s, the federal government has increasingly focused on aiding state and local enforcement of so-called street crime, such as street-level drug sales, robberies, gun possession, and episodic violence. While some of that aid comes in the form of direct grants to state and local law enforcement, it is also in-kind, meaning that federal law enforcement works closely with state and local law enforcement in investigating cases and increasingly brings more of these cases to federal court where, for a variety of reasons, conviction is more assured and punishment likely more severe. While some have applauded this expansion of federal criminal enforcement as an effective crime-fighting tool, others have criticized it as an encroachment on state and local authority, a misallocation of federal resources, and a source of unequal treatment of criminal defendants.
Sentencing
Until the 1980s, federal sentences were largely the result of discretionary decision-making by trial judges. That changed with the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which both established mandatory sentencing ranges (guidelines) to be set by a commission, and, for certain crimes, imposed mandatory minimum penalties. The guidelines and mandatory penalties have been widely credited for a shift in power away from judges and toward federal prosecutors as well as for a decline in federal trials and a rise in guilty pleas. While a number of states also began to use mandatory sentencing guidelines around this time, the federal guidelines became notorious for mandating higher penalties relative to many (though by no means all) state guidelines schemes.
The Supreme Court ruled the mandatory guidelines unconstitutional but upheld their constitutionality as an advisory scheme. Although no longer mandatory, the guidelines continue to heavily influence judicial sentencing decisions in most categories of crimes. Along with mandatory minimum penalties, they remain a focus of intense debate by scholars and policy makers.
Mens Rea
Mens rea (Latin for guilty mind) refers to a defendant’s awareness of wrongdoing. Federal crimes do not have a uniform mens rea standard; the level of culpability required (e.g., whether a defendant must act knowingly, intentionally, or willfully) is defined by statute. Where a federal statute is silent on the matter, a court interprets the requisite mens rea. Courts, including the Supreme Court, have interpreted some of these statutes as strict liability statutes—that is, requiring no guilty mind at all—and others as requiring a certain level of criminal knowledge or intent. Some have criticized this approach as haphazard and unclear, proposing that lawmakers should instead decree a default mens rea for all federal criminal statutes not otherwise specifying it. Others fear that such reforms will heighten the federal mens rea requirement, making it more difficult for prosecutors to prove guilt.
References:
- Brown, D. K. (2012). Federal mens rea interpretation and the limits of culpability’s relevance. Law and Contemporary Problems, 75, 109–131.
- Richman, D. C. (2000). The changing boundaries between federal and local law enforcement. In Criminal Justice 2000 (Vol. 2, pp. 81–111). Washington, DC: National Institutes of Justice.
- Stith, K. (2008). The arc of the pendulum: Judges, prosecutors and the exercise of discretion. Yale Law Journal, 117, 1420–1497.
- United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005).