Cite as: 518 U. S. 37 (1996)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
of its malignity." United States v. Cornell, 25 F. Cas. 650, 657-658 (No. 14,868) (CC R. I. 1820).
The historical record does not leave room for the view that the common law's rejection of intoxication as an "excuse" or "justification" for crime would nonetheless permit the defendant to show that intoxication prevented the requisite mens rea. Hale, Coke, and Blackstone were familiar, to say the least, with the concept of mens rea, and acknowledged that drunkenness "deprive[s] men of the use of reason," 1 Hale, supra, at *32; see also Blackstone, supra, at *25. It is inconceivable that they did not realize that an offender's drunkenness might impair his ability to form the requisite intent; and inconceivable that their failure to note this massive exception from the general rule of disregard of intoxication was an oversight. Hale's statement that a drunken offender shall have the same judgment "as if he were in his right senses" must be understood as precluding a defendant from arguing that, because of his intoxication, he could not have possessed the mens rea required to commit the crime. And the same must be said of the exemplar of the common-law rule cited by both Hale and Blackstone, see 1 Hale, supra, at *32; Blackstone, supra, at *26, n. w, which is Serjeant Pollard's argument to the King's Bench in Reniger v. Fogossa, 1 Plowd. 1, 19, 75 Eng. Rep. 1, 31 (1550): "[I]f a person that is drunk kills another, this shall be Felony, and he shall be hanged for it, and yet he did it through Ignorance, for when he was drunk he had no Understanding nor Memory; but inasmuch as that Ignorance was occasioned by his own Act and Folly, and he might have avoided it, he shall not be privileged thereby." (Emphasis added.) See also Beverley's Case, 4 Co. Rep. 123b, 125a, 76 Eng. Rep. 1118, 1123 (K. B. 1603) ("although he who is drunk, is for the time non compos mentis, yet his drunkenness does not extenuate his act or offence, nor turn to his avail" (emphasis added) (footnote omitted)).
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