This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 9th, 2016. I'm Caleb Brown.

Oklahoma has tightened up its rules on civil asset forfeiture, but the practice continues in

Oklahoma and in most other states.

Last week I spoke with Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt about civil asset forfeiture

and other issues.

Mens rea is a protection for the accused in criminal cases.

It is meant to protect the accused from accidentally becoming a criminal.

That is the idea that you had a criminal mind that you intended to do something bad.

But there are a lot of statutes at the state and federal level that simply don't provide for

that and people find themselves charged with some pretty stiff

criminal penalties without ever having been without it ever having been

established that they intended to commit a crime.

What's the status of that as you see it?

Well, I think you've said it very well.

The importance of the distinction between criminal and civil is fundamentally the requisite mental capacity, the mens rea as you

described and committing or intending to violate the law.

And I think what you see happening across the country and it's very discouraging

is that regulatory bodies, regulatory agencies are leveraging the potential of

criminal charges to do what to extract extract fines and penalties at a significant level.

I mean the federal government has done this rather extensively. I think you see certain states

doing the same thing and so this effort to have a requisite mens rea requirement in dealing with regulatory

enforcement and regulatory compliance is terribly important and something that every

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