Sawed-Off Shotguns, Automatic Rifles, Hand Grenades, and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction

Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Watterson, __ N.C. App. __ (2009). The defendant was charged with, and convicted of, two counts of possession of a weapon of mass destruction in violation of G.S. 14-288.8.  The charges were based on the defendant's possession of two shotguns, each of which had been sawed off to about a 14-inch barrel length. (Anything under 18 inches is verboten per G.S. 14-288.8(c)(3).) The defendant admitted that he had sawed off the barrels but claimed that he didn't know exactly how long they were. He requested a jury instruction that knowledge of the length of the barrel was an element of the offense. The trial court refused to give the instruction. On appeal, the defendant argued that the trial court's instructions improperly failed to impose any mens rea requirement, instead treating possession of a weapon of mass destruction as a strict liability offense. The defendant's brief relied heavily on Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600 (1994), a case in which the Supreme Court held that the government must prove that a defendant knew that his firearm was capable of fully automatic operation in order to obtain a conviction for failure to register an automatic firearm as required by the National Firearms Act. The Staples Court declined to "impose criminal sanctions on a class of persons whose mental state--ignorance of the characteristics of weapons in their possession--makes their actions entirely innocent," especially in light of the severe sentences possible under the Act. The Court [...]