Whether the mens rea requirement of 'knowingly' in a criminal statute applies to all elements of the offense, or only to those elements that separate wrongful from innocent conduct

QUESTION PRESENTED FOR REVIEW In the wake of Flores-Figueroa v. United States, 556 U.S. 646 (2009), and Rehaif v. United States, 139 S.Ct. 2191 (2019), jurists continue to disagree whether, when the word “knowingly” introduces the text of a criminal statute, it applies to all the subsequently listed elements of the crime, or only applies when proof of knowledge is necessary to separate wrongful from innocent acts. Compare United States v. Collazo, 984 F.3d 1308, 1325 (9" Cir. 2021) (en banc) (“absent statutory language suggesting otherwise, the scienter presumption does not apply to elements that do not separate innocent from wrongful conduct.”), with id. at 1342 (Fletcher, J., dissenting) (“The Supreme Court has never held that the presumption of mens rea protects only the entirely innocent.”). Petitioner submits that this question ought to be resolved by requiring proof of mens rea when the element at issue results in “dramatically more severe” punishment. See United States v. Burwell, 690 F.3d 500, 548 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (en banc) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). Here, therefore, to convict a defendant under 8 U.S.C. § 1327 for “knowingly” smuggling into the United States an alien who is an aggravated felon, the government must prove that the defendant knew that the alien was an aggravated felon, because the 10-year maximum penalty for this offense is twice as severe as the five-year maximum of § 1324, for smuggling an alien who was undocumented, but not an aggravated felon. i INTERESTED PARTIES There are no