Todd Farha, CEO of WellCare Health Plans, was convicted of knowingly executing a fraud by submitting false expenditure reports to the state. However, the district court decided that “knowingly” didn’t actually have to mean that Farha knew that the reports were false, but only that in submitting the reports Farha acted with “deliberate indifference” as to whether they were accurate. Essentially, a non-lawyer was convicted for being insufficiently cautious in adopting an interpretation of an ambiguous regulatory statute.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld Farha’s conviction even in the absence of the required statutory mental-state element (what lawyers call mens rea). The appellate court decided, in agreement with the district court, that deliberate indifference toward falsity may stand in for knowledge of falsity. The practical implication is that the court lowered the mens rea standard and used a civil standard of liability to a criminal case. (You can be liable in a civil lawsuit even if you’re not guilty for criminal-punishment purposes.)
Cato has now filed a brief supporting Farha’s request that the Supreme Court review his case. The lower court’s holding is out of step with precedent, with bedrock principles of statutory interpretation regarding the mental-state elements of a criminal offense, and with common sense notions of justice. The most egregious aspect of the ruling is that mens rea elements are seen as so crucial to the criminal law that the Supreme Court has been willing to read them into a statute when the statute is silent regarding necessary mental state.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/you-shouldnt-be-criminally-liable-you-dont-have-guilty-mind
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