Morissette v. United States

Morisette was deer hunting in an area marked as a bombing range when he found some spent military shell casings. He believed that they were abandoned because they had been dumped in disorderly piles, so he took three tons of them to a farm and flattened them with a tractor. Morisette later sold them in a nearby town as scrap for $84. He was charged with knowing conversion of government property, a federal crime. Courts had established that the government has the power to regulate its property, and people who violate that right may be held strictly liable. The trial court thus denied Morisette the opportunity to argue that he did not have the intent to unlawfully convert the scrap, which he had genuinely believed was abandoned. The judge ruled that the jury could find culpability without a mental state element.