The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a decision endorsing the 1962 Model Penal Code’s definition of “reckless” behavior, referring to that definition as the “dominant formulation.” In his Opinion analysis, Rory Little of SCOTUSblog noted that, “while the Court has certainly invoked the MPC in the past, it seems like quite a significant step today for the Court to adopt, so immediately and without debate, the MPC as the ‘dominant formulation.’”
The case, Voisine v. United States, involved a federal law, 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(9), prohibiting the possession of a firearm by an individual convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” The issue before the Court was whether a misdemeanor assault conviction for reckless conduct triggered the firearms ban.
In United States v. Castleman, a case heard by the Court in 2014, it was held that a knowing or intentional assault qualified as a "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence" for purposes of possessing a firearm, but left open whether the same was true of reckless assault.
The Voisine opinion, delivered by Justice Elena Kagan, found that, like knowing or intentional conduct, reckless conduct did trigger the statutory firearms ban. In addition to looking at the Model Penal Code to support its finding, the Court also looked at the congressional intent of passing Section 922(g)(9):
. . . Congress passed §922(g)(9) to take guns out of the hands of abusers convicted under the misdemeanor assault laws then in general use in the States. And by that time, a substantial majority of jurisdictions, following the Model Penal Code’s lead, had abandoned the common law’s approach to mens rea in drafting and interpreting their assault and battery statutes. (citations omitted).