"Can you list a dozen laws that you believe that we should eliminate, which regularly send people to prison, who should not be imprisoned?"
The case of the snowmobiler that you cite is hardly one over which people are regularly sent to prison. So you haven't offered even a single law that meets the challenge. And that one may not even actually meet your criteria. From the appeals court finding:
"Agent Burd's testimony that Unser's statements only three weeks after the ordeal were inconsistent with his trial testimony and that Unser had said then that he did not know where he had gone only because he hadn't been paying much attention, not because he was lost in a ground blizzard."
1) This stack is not about specific laws, but about general legal principles... or, better, general principles of justice. Thus when I propose repealing all strict liability laws, this means that thousands of laws would be repealed, at least in their current form. And thus all of the people being punished for those laws would no longer be punished.
2) You have mens rea backward in your example. For mens rea it is up to the state to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you DID have mens rea... you knew (or reasonably should have known) that something was illegal, and you knew you were doing that illegal thing. Not paying much attention when snowmobiling is clear mens rea if you hit someone, since you knew, or should have known, that you had the responsibility to handle the vehicle safely to others.
But it is not mens rea when it comes to crossing over some poorly marked, or perhaps even non-marked, border; particularly in an emergency setting. I don't believe any reasonable jury would have convicted him... which goes back to the trial by jury post.
My challenge was a lot more specific:
"Can you list a dozen laws that you believe that we should eliminate, which regularly send people to prison, who should not be imprisoned?"
The case of the snowmobiler that you cite is hardly one over which people are regularly sent to prison. So you haven't offered even a single law that meets the challenge. And that one may not even actually meet your criteria. From the appeals court finding:
"Agent Burd's testimony that Unser's statements only three weeks after the ordeal were inconsistent with his trial testimony and that Unser had said then that he did not know where he had gone only because he hadn't been paying much attention, not because he was lost in a ground blizzard."
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-10th-circuit/1312105.html
A couple of issues:
1) This stack is not about specific laws, but about general legal principles... or, better, general principles of justice. Thus when I propose repealing all strict liability laws, this means that thousands of laws would be repealed, at least in their current form. And thus all of the people being punished for those laws would no longer be punished.
2) You have mens rea backward in your example. For mens rea it is up to the state to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you DID have mens rea... you knew (or reasonably should have known) that something was illegal, and you knew you were doing that illegal thing. Not paying much attention when snowmobiling is clear mens rea if you hit someone, since you knew, or should have known, that you had the responsibility to handle the vehicle safely to others.
But it is not mens rea when it comes to crossing over some poorly marked, or perhaps even non-marked, border; particularly in an emergency setting. I don't believe any reasonable jury would have convicted him... which goes back to the trial by jury post.