Last week, in response to several articles Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton wrote attacking the Federal First Step Act, I wrote the following Twitter thread in response (for some reason Medium reverses the attachments so they appear above the tweets, but you should be able to figure it out).
In case this is confusing to you, Mens Rea is the idea that to be convicted of a crime the prosecution has to prove that you had intent to commit a crime. If you had Mens Rea requirements for all crimes (as Mr. Cotton supports) all people that the court could not prove had the intention to commit a crime would be found not guilty (for any charge intent could not be proven).
Now, since a great deal of Fentanyl is added to heroin upstream (before it gets to a dealer), this would mean a large percentage of dealers would not have intent to distribute Fentanyl (remember, a big part of Tom Cotton’s argument is that the First Step Act would be a “jailbreak” for Fentanyl dealers).
Okay, if you want to know more about the First Step Act:
Many months ago, I hosted this episode of my podcast with guests Ames Grawert (Brennan Center for Justice), Jessica Jackson-Sloan (#cut50), and Jason Pye (Freedomworks).
After sentencing reforms were added to the Senate version of the bill, I did another episode doing a deeper dive into why I support the bill.
Or if you are looking for a quick take on my support, here is my entry in the First Step Act Challenge series.
That is pretty much it, anyway, Tom Cotton is most likely being intentionally misleading, it will be up to other folks to figure out his motives.
Help us get the First Step Act passed, call your senators:
Josh is the co-host of the Decarceration Nation podcast and is a blogger and freelance writer who writes about criminal justice reform, television, movies, music, politics, race, ethics, and more.
