{"id":793,"date":"2012-05-05T15:34:57","date_gmt":"2012-05-05T19:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/?p=793"},"modified":"2012-07-21T10:25:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T14:25:50","slug":"mistake-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Mistake of Law Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mistake of Law is not a valid defense to a <a title=\"General Intent vs. Specific Intent\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/general-intent-vs-specific-intent\/\">general intent <\/a>crime. Even if the defendant&#8217;s mistake was reasonable, mistake of law is not a valid defense. (See <a title=\"People v. Marrero, 69 N.Y. 2d 382\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/people-v-marrero\/\"><em>People v. Marrero<\/em><\/a>). The only exception is if a statute proscribing the defendant&#8217;s conduct has not been reasonably made available or if the defendant recently relied on a statute or judicial decision that was recently held unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>However, under a <a title=\"General Intent vs. Specific Intent\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/general-intent-vs-specific-intent\/\">specific intent<\/a> crime, the defendant&#8217;s mistake of law is a valid defense whether reasonable or unreasonable. (See <em><a title=\"Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/cheek-v-united-states\/\">Cheek v. United States<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Compare to <a title=\"Mistake of Fact Defense\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-fact\/\">Mistake of Fact Defense<\/a><\/p>\n<p>More Helpful Information: <a title=\"Specific Intent Crimes List\" href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/general-intent-vs-specific-intent\/\">List of General Intent and Specific Intent Crimes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mistake of Law is not a valid defense to a general intent crime. Even if the defendant&#8217;s mistake was reasonable, mistake of law is not a valid defense. (See People v. Marrero). The only exception is if a statute proscribing the defendant&#8217;s conduct has not been reasonably made available or if the defendant recently relied &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.miblaw.com\/lawschool\/mistake-of-law\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mistake of Law Defense&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,176],"tags":[172,164,162,163,165],"class_list":["post-793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-law","category-key-concepts-criminal-law","tag-criminal-defense","tag-general-intent","tag-mistake-of-fact","tag-mistake-of-law","tag-specific-intent"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ 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