Cite as: 513 U. S. 64 (1994)
Scalia, J., dissenting
sition that "the presumption in favor of a scienter requirement should apply to each of the statutory elements that criminalize otherwise innocent conduct," ante, at 72, even when the plain text of the statute says otherwise. All those earlier cases employ the presumption as a rule of interpretation which applies when Congress has not addressed the question of criminal intent (Staples and Gypsum), or when the import of what it has said on that subject is ambiguous (Morissette and Liparota). Today's opinion converts the rule of interpretation into a rule of law, contradicting the plain import of what Congress has specifically prescribed regarding criminal intent.
In United States v. Thomas, 893 F. 2d 1066, 1070 (CA9), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 826 (1990), the Ninth Circuit interpreted 18 U. S. C. § 2252 to require knowledge of neither the fact that the visual depiction portrays sexually explicit conduct, nor the fact that a participant in that conduct was a minor. The panel in the present case accepted that interpretation. See 982 F. 2d 1285, 1289 (CA9 1992). To say, as the Court does, that this interpretation is "the most grammatical reading," ante, at 70, or "[t]he most natural grammatical reading," ante, at 68, is understatement to the point of distortion—rather like saying that the ordinarily preferred total for two plus two is four. The Ninth Circuit's interpretation is in fact and quite obviously the only grammatical reading. If one were to rack his brains for a way to express the thought that the knowledge requirement in subsection (a)(1) applied only to the transportation or shipment of visual depiction in interstate or foreign commerce, and not to the fact that that depiction was produced by use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and was a depiction of that conduct, it would be impossible to construct a sentence structure that more clearly conveys that thought, and that thought alone. The word "knowingly" is contained, not merely in a distant phrase, but in an entirely separate clause from the one into which today's opinion inserts it. The
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