In Ruan v. United States, 597 U.S. --- (2022), the Court considered the mens rea requirement for "[a] provision of the Controlled Substances Act, codified at 21 U. S. C. §841, [which] makes it a federal crime, '[e]xcept as authorized[,] . . . for any person knowingly or intentionally . . . to manufacture, distribute, or dispense . . . a controlled substance,' such as opioids."
Specifically, the Court "granted the petitions and consolidated the cases to consider what mens rea applies to §841’s authorization exception."
The Court held, "§841’s 'knowingly or intentionally' mens rea applies to the 'except as authorized' clause. This means that once a defendant meets the burden of producing evidence that his or her conduct was 'authorized,' the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner."
"[F]or purposes of a criminal conviction under §841, this requires proving that a defendant knew or intended that his or her conduct was unauthorized."
In Concepcion v. United States, 597 U.S. --- (2022), "[t]he question . . . is whether a district court adjudicating a motion under the First Step Act may consider other intervening changes of law (such as changes to the Sentencing Guidelines) or changes of fact (such as behavior in prison) in adjudicating a First Step Act motion."
"The Court holds that they may. It is only when Congress or the Constitution limits the scope of information that a district court may consider in deciding whether, and to what extent, to modify a sentence, that a district court’s discretion to consider information is restrained. Nothing in the First Step Act contains such a limitation."
In short, '[t]he First Step Act does not require a district court to be persuaded by the nonfrivolous arguments raised by the parties before it, but it does require the court to consider them.
