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Opinion of the Court
does not contain them." United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U. S. 64, 70 (1994).6 Properly applied to § 2113, however, the presumption in favor of scienter demands only that we read subsection (a) as requiring proof of general intent—that is, that the defendant possessed knowledge with respect to the actus reus of the crime (here, the taking of property of another by force and violence or intimidation).
Before explaining why this is so under our cases, an example, United States v. Lewis, 628 F. 2d 1276, 1279 (CA10 1980), cert. denied, 450 U. S. 924 (1981), will help to make the distinction between "general" and "specific" intent less esoteric. In Lewis, a person entered a bank and took money from a teller at gunpoint, but deliberately failed to make a quick getaway from the bank in the hope of being arrested so that he would be returned to prison and treated for alcoholism. Though this defendant knowingly engaged in the acts of using force and taking money (satisfying "general intent"), he did not intend permanently to deprive the bank of its possession of the money (failing to satisfy "specific intent").7 See generally 1 W. LaFave & A. Scott, Substantive Criminal
6 This interpretive principle exists quite apart from the canon on imputing common-law meaning. See, e. g., X-Citement Video, 513 U. S., at 70 (applying presumption in favor of scienter to statute proscribing the shipping or receiving of visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, without first inquiring as to the existence of a common-law antecedent to this offense); Staples v. United States, 511 U. S. 600 (1994) (similar).
7 The dissent claims that the Lewis court determined that the jury could have found specific intent to steal on the facts presented, and thus disputes our characterization of the case as illustrating a situation where a defendant acts only with general intent. Post, at 283-284 (citing Lewis, 628 F. 2d, at 1279). The dissent fails to acknowledge, however, that the Lewis court made this determination only because some evidence suggested that, if the defendant had not been arrested, he would have kept the stolen money. Ibid. The Lewis court, implicitly acknowledging the possibility that some defendant (if not Lewis) might unconditionally intend to turn himself in after completing a bank theft, proceeded to hold, in the alternative, that § 2113(a) covers a defendant who acts only with general intent. See ibid.
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