618
Opinion of the Court
offender's reputation." Morissette, 342 U. S., at 256.15 We
have even recognized that it was "[u]nder such considerations" that courts have construed statutes to dispense with mens rea. Ibid.
Our characterization of the public welfare offense in Morissette hardly seems apt, however, for a crime that is a felony, as is violation of § 5861(d).16 After all, "felony" is, as we noted in distinguishing certain common-law crimes from public welfare offenses, " 'as bad a word as you can give to man or thing.' " Id., at 260 (quoting 2 F. Pollock & F. Mait-land, History of English Law 465 (2d ed. 1899)). Close adherence to the early cases described above might suggest that punishing a violation as a felony is simply incompatible with the theory of the public welfare offense. In this view, absent a clear statement from Congress that mens rea is not required, we should not apply the public welfare offense rationale to interpret any statute defining a felony offense as dispensing with mens rea. But see United States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250 (1922).
We need not adopt such a definitive rule of construction to decide this case, however. Instead, we note only that where, as here, dispensing with mens rea would require the defendant to have knowledge only of traditionally lawful conduct, a severe penalty is a further factor tending to suggest that Congress did not intend to eliminate a mens rea require-15 See also United States Gypsum, 438 U. S., at 442, n. 18 (noting that an individual violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act is a felony punishable by three years in prison or a fine not exceeding $100,000 and stating that "[t]he severity of these sanctions provides further support for our conclusion that the [Act] should not be construed as creating strict-liability crimes"). Cf. Holdridge v. United States, 282 F. 2d 302, 310 (CA8 1960) (Blackmun, J.) ("[W]here a federal criminal statute omits mention of intent and . . . where the penalty is relatively small, where conviction does not gravely besmirch, [and] where the statutory crime is not one taken over from the common law, . . . the statute can be construed as one not requiring criminal intent").
16 Title 18 U. S. C. § 3559 makes any crime punishable by more than one year in prison a felony.
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