Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NHMy new book argues that American criminal law no longer needs your intent or a jury, and that its punishment has no end date. Here are the court records behind it, the one number I had to re-check this year, and why the book came out of a New Hampshire newsroom.
On August 23, 2007, the Miss Katie was six days into a commercial fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico when a Florida wildlife officer, deputized as a federal agent, came aboard and started measuring red grouper. The legal minimum was 20 inches. He set aside 72 fish he judged too short. Nearly all of them, the Supreme Court later wrote, measured between 19 and 20 inches. He handed the captain, John Yates, a citation and told him to keep the fish crated until the boat reached port.
The fishing violation was a civil matter, punishable by a fine or a license suspension. What came next was a crime. A crew member later admitted that, on Yates’s order, he threw the measured fish overboard and swapped in others. More than two and a half years after the boarding, federal prosecutors charged Yates under a section of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the law Congress passed after Enron collapsed. It carries up to 20 years. By the time he was indicted, the size limit had dropped to 18 inches. Not one of the 72 fish was under it.
Full disclosure: I wrote the book this article describes, and I earn money when a copy sells. Every case fact below was checked against the court opinion, agency record or report named in the fact-check table, the same standard this newsroom applies to anyone else’s book.
That case opens Chapter 5 of Malice Not Required: How America Criminalized Its Own People and Called It Justice, my new book on overcriminalization and plea coercion. The argument fits in three sentences. The federal criminal code has grown past the point where a citizen, or the government, can say what it contains. Almost nobody convicted under it ever faced a jury. And the punishment keeps running after the sentence ends, through tens of thousands of legal restrictions most defendants never hear about before they plead.
Related coverage: “Nobody Can Count the Laws You’re Presumed to Know” (July 3, 2026) takes the counting problem to New Hampshire. “Seven Laws Changed New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know Statute Since 2024” (Sept. 16, 2026) tracks every amendment to RSA 91-A. “New Hampshire Doesn’t Count Who Meets the Five-Day Records Deadline” (Nov. 10, 2026) explains the compliance count GSR is building.
What the book argues
The title is a description. For most of Anglo-American legal history a crime took two things: a prohibited act and a guilty mind. Lawyers call the second part mens rea. The book traces how, over the last century, Congress and the agencies it empowered wrote offenses that dropped it. You did the thing. Whether you meant to, or knew it was forbidden, stopped mattering.
It opens with the deal the founding generation thought it had struck: a criminal law short enough to know, plain enough to read, aimed at people who meant harm, and enforced only after a jury agreed. Then it spends 19 chapters, in four parts, on what happened to each promise.
The book does not treat this as a partisan story. Its account runs through the drug laws of the 1980s, the 1994 crime bill and decades of regulatory growth, and it blames both parties for building the system and for failing to undo it.
A code nobody can count
Start with the statutes. In May 2025, Heritage Foundation legal fellow GianCarlo Canaparo told a House Judiciary subcommittee that a count he helped run found 5,199 federal crimes in the U.S. Code as of 2019. That is the firmest number there is, and it covers only the laws Congress wrote.
The rules agencies write are the harder problem. A regulation can carry a criminal penalty without Congress ever voting on its text. “Nobody knows how many such crimes there are,” Canaparo testified, pointing to a single estimate from the 1990s of about 300,000. That estimate is the number in the title of my Chapter 2.
Two days after that hearing, on May 9, 2025, the president signed Executive Order 14294. It says the Code of Federal Regulations runs past 48,000 sections and 175,000 pages, and that no one, likely including the Justice Department, “knows how many separate criminal offenses” it contains. The order gave every agency a year to list its criminal regulatory offenses and post the list.
The lists started arriving this spring, and this is the number I had to re-check. The Justice Department’s report, dated April 28, 2026, identifies 62. Health and Human Services, on May 8, counted 26. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found dozens and the Comptroller of the Currency found one, according to a summary by the law firm Orrick. The Environmental Protection Agency published a list organized under 11 statutes, according to the firm Liskow & Lewis.
Those are the reports I have read or seen summarized. Where they give a number, it is in the dozens, and I have found no government-wide total. Either the old estimate ran high, or the agencies are counting something narrower than the people who made it. Nobody has reconciled the two. The book’s text labels the figure an estimate. After this spring I would call it an open question, and I would rather you hear that from me. What the order confirms is the book’s starting point: in 2025 the government said, in writing, that it did not know.
Three cases the book is built on
The fisherman
The charge against Yates punishes anyone who destroys a “record, document, or tangible object” to obstruct a federal investigation. The government’s theory was that a fish is a tangible object. He was convicted at trial, sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years of supervised release, and carried a federal felony record to the Supreme Court. He did not contest a second conviction, under a law against destroying property to keep the government from seizing it. His fight was over the 20-year statute.
He won, barely. In February 2015, four justices held that the phrase covers objects used to record or preserve information. A fifth agreed on narrower grounds, and four dissented. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent. She read the statute to cover the fish and would have let the conviction stand. She also called the law “an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code.” When the justice voting against you says the code is the problem, the problem is not in dispute.
The driver
Bobby Unser won the Indianapolis 500 three times. On December 20, 1996, he and a friend who had never ridden a snowmobile left his ranch near Chama, New Mexico, and drove across the state line to ride in Colorado’s Rio Grande National Forest. On a mesa a ground blizzard came up and visibility dropped to near zero. They got lost. One machine stuck in a ravine. The other quit. The two men dug a snow cave for the night, walked through the next day and into the night after, and found a barn with a telephone some time after midnight. A hospital treated them for frostbite, dehydration and exhaustion. The Tenth Circuit called it a story of “survival in the wilderness under extreme conditions.”
About three weeks later Unser asked the Forest Service for help finding his snowmobile. According to the court’s opinion, the agent he was working with was asked not to tell him that two colleagues coming down from Colorado were running a criminal investigation. Unser was told they could help him find the machine. He met them alone and talked for about three and a half hours.
The agents had concluded he probably crossed into the South San Juan Wilderness, where motor vehicles are banned. The charge was a petty offense carrying up to six months. A judge convicted him after a two-day trial and fined him $75. Unser appealed anyway, and in January 1999 the Tenth Circuit affirmed. It held the rule was a public welfare offense with no mental-state requirement. The government did not have to prove he knew where the boundary was or meant to cross it. The fine was $75. The holding is what the book cares about: a person can commit a federal crime without knowing he did anything wrong.
The fifty-five years
In May and June 2002, a government informant bought eight ounces of marijuana from Weldon Angelos, a Salt Lake City music producer with two young children, three times at $350 a sale. At the first buy the informant saw a pistol by the car’s center console. At the second, Angelos showed one in an ankle holster.
Prosecutors offered 15 years. They told him that if he refused, they would add gun counts carrying more than 100 years of mandatory time. He refused. They added them. A jury convicted him on three of the gun counts, and the statute stacked the terms: five years for the first, 25 for each one after.
On November 16, 2004, Judge Paul Cassell sentenced him to 55 years and one day, the minimum the law allowed, in an opinion that called the result “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.” He asked the president to commute it to no more than 18 years, the average sentence the jurors themselves recommended. The opinion includes a table comparing the term with federal guideline sentences for other crimes.
According to KSL, Angelos served more than 12 years and walked out in 2016 after his sentence was reduced in a sealed court record. He was pardoned in December 2020. The 40-year gap between the offer and the sentence was the price of asking for a trial.
The trial that disappeared
Angelos is the extreme case of an ordinary rule. In Missouri v. Frye, decided in March 2012, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the Supreme Court that 97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions come from guilty pleas. He did not present that as a scandal. He presented it as the reason defense lawyers owe their clients competent advice during plea talks, because that is where cases end.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, Missouri v. Frye (2012), quoting the Court’s companion decision in Lafler v. Cooper
The Sentencing Commission’s figure for fiscal year 2025 is higher still. Of 66,662 federal cases, 98 percent ended in a guilty plea. A jury is the one point in a prosecution where ordinary citizens can tell the government no. In 98 of every 100 federal cases, that point never comes.
The sentence after the sentence
The third failure is the quietest. The National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction, developed by the American Bar Association with a federal grant, catalogs more than 44,000 separate legal consequences of a conviction. Chapter 13 walks through what they reach: occupational licenses, housing, public benefits, jury service. Its argument is that a plea signed to avoid a trial penalty buys a second sentence nobody explained in court.
What the book would change
Chapter 18 makes four proposals. The book’s case is that none needs a constitutional amendment and all four sit within powers Congress already has.
- Restore intent. If a federal criminal law names no mental state, the government must prove the defendant acted knowingly.
- Sunset the code. Every criminal statute expires on a schedule unless Congress votes to keep it.
- Constrain the prosecutor. A heavily stacked indictment comes with a written justification a judge can review.
- End the shadow sentence. Collateral consequences stop when the sentence is complete.
Malice Not Required, Chapter 19
Where New Hampshire stands
New Hampshire’s criminal code still says what the federal code forgot.
That is the old rule, written down: a guilty mind for crimes, with strict liability held to violations. Whether New Hampshire’s own regulatory offenses stay inside that line is a question this newsroom has not finished answering. I have found no state inventory that would answer it.
Why this is a GSR book
This newsroom works two beats that look unrelated: overcriminalization and the Right-to-Know Law. The book is where they meet. Both come down to whether a citizen can read the rules and check the people enforcing them.
A criminal code that cannot be counted is a records problem. So is a state where I have located no agency that tallies which offices respond within the five business days RSA 91-A:4 sets, which is why GSR is building that count. RSA 91-A gives a reporter the access it gives every other citizen and no more. The federal criminal code gives every citizen the same exposure to rules nobody has finished listing.
I wrote the book the way GSR runs a story. The reference section lists sources chapter by chapter so a reader can check my work, and the agency lists above show why that matters. I checked my own number against them and told you what I found. A system that convicts without intent and without juries depends on nobody reading the file.
Read it, check it, and tell me where it is wrong. Then ask your representative in Concord and your member of Congress one question: how many crimes are on the books? Washington spent the past year trying to answer that for its own regulations. Ask to see the list.
— Dexter Dow, Granite State Report
Your Turn
Poll: Should a person be convicted of a crime without proof they knew they were breaking a rule?
A) Never · B) Only for minor violations with fines · C) Yes, when public safety is at stake
Poll: Which of the book’s four fixes should Congress take up first?
A) Restore intent · B) Sunset the code · C) Constrain the prosecutor · D) End the shadow sentence
You tell me: Have you or someone you know pleaded guilty in New Hampshire to avoid a worse charge? Send one line to granitestatereport@gmail.com. Nothing runs without your permission.
Fact check
| # | Claim | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yates: Aug. 23, 2007 boarding of the Miss Katie, six days into a trip, by a Florida officer deputized as a federal agent; 72 red grouper under the 20-inch minimum, nearly all between 19 and 20 inches; the size violation was a civil offense; fish thrown overboard on Yates’s order; indicted more than 32 months later; limit lowered to 18 inches by then and no measured fish below it | VERIFIED | Yates v. United States, 574 U.S. 528 (2015), plurality opinion |
| 2 | Yates: 18 U.S.C. § 1519, part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 20-year maximum; sentence of 30 days and three years of supervised release; second conviction under § 2232(a) not contested | VERIFIED | Yates v. United States, plurality opinion |
| 3 | Yates decided Feb. 25, 2015: four-justice plurality, Justice Alito concurring in the judgment, four dissenting; Justice Kagan’s dissent and its quoted line | VERIFIED | Yates v. United States, plurality, concurrence and dissent |
| 4 | Unser: Dec. 20, 1996 trip from his ranch near Chama, N.M., into the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado; ground blizzard; both machines lost; snow cave; barn with a telephone after midnight; treated for frostbite, dehydration and exhaustion; the court’s quoted line | VERIFIED | United States v. Unser, 165 F.3d 755 (10th Cir. 1999) |
| 5 | Unser: sought Forest Service help about three weeks later; agent asked not to tell him the Colorado agents were conducting a criminal investigation; met them alone for about three and a half hours; petty offense with a six-month maximum; two-day bench trial; $75 fine; affirmed Jan. 4, 1999; public welfare offense with no mental-state requirement | VERIFIED | United States v. Unser, 165 F.3d 755 (10th Cir. 1999) |
| 6 | Unser won the Indianapolis 500 in 1968, 1975 and 1981 | ATTRIBUTED | Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, inductee biography |
| 7 | Angelos: three controlled buys of eight ounces at $350 on May 21, June 4 and June 18, 2002; pistol seen at the first two; Salt Lake City music producer with two young children; 15-year plea offer of Jan. 20, 2003; warning of more than 100 years; superseding indictments; convicted on three § 924(c) counts | VERIFIED | United States v. Angelos, 345 F. Supp. 2d 1227 (D. Utah 2004) |
| 8 | Angelos: 55 years and one day on Nov. 16, 2004, the statutory minimum; the judge’s quoted line; his request that the president commute the term to no more than 18 years, the jurors’ average recommendation | VERIFIED | United States v. Angelos, 345 F. Supp. 2d 1227 (D. Utah 2004) |
| 9 | Chart figures: 660 months for Angelos’s firearm counts; guideline sentences of 293, 235, 210, 168 and 151 months for the listed crimes; 660 divided by 293 is 2.25 | VERIFIED | United States v. Angelos, Table I; ratio computed by GSR |
| 10 | Angelos served more than 12 years and was released in 2016 after a sentence reduction in a sealed district court record | ATTRIBUTED | KSL.com, June 3, 2016 |
| 11 | Angelos pardoned Dec. 22, 2020 | ATTRIBUTED | KSL.com, Dec. 22, 2020 |
| 12 | 97 percent of federal and 94 percent of state convictions result from guilty pleas; “system of pleas” quote | VERIFIED | Missouri v. Frye, 566 U.S. 134 (2012) |
| 13 | Fiscal year 2025: 66,662 federal cases; 98 percent ended in a guilty plea and the remaining cases went to trial | VERIFIED | U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2025 Annual Report, pages 14 and 16 |
| 14 | More than 44,000 collateral consequences cataloged; inventory developed by the ABA with a National Institute of Justice grant | VERIFIED | National Institute of Justice, National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction |
| 15 | 5,199 crimes in the U.S. Code as of 2019; “Nobody knows” quote; one 1990s estimate of about 300,000 regulatory crimes | ATTRIBUTED | GianCarlo Canaparo, Heritage Foundation, written testimony and hearing record, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, May 7, 2025 |
| 16 | Executive Order 14294 signed May 9, 2025; over 48,000 sections and 175,000 pages; the quoted line; agencies given 365 days to list criminal regulatory offenses and post the list | VERIFIED | Executive Order 14294, Federal Register, May 14, 2025 |
| 17 | Justice Department identified 62 criminal regulatory offenses (April 28, 2026); HHS identified 26 (May 8, 2026) | VERIFIED | Department of Justice report; HHS response to Section 4 of Executive Order 14294 |
| 18 | CFPB identified dozens of offenses and the OCC one (May 8, 2026); EPA published its list May 8, 2026, organized under 11 statutes | ATTRIBUTED | Orrick, May 15, 2026; Liskow & Lewis, June 1, 2026 |
| 19 | RSA 626:2, I requires a culpable mental state for felonies and misdemeanors and allows violations without one | VERIFIED | RSA 626:2, New Hampshire General Court |
| 20 | RSA 91-A:4 gives “every citizen” the right to inspect governmental records and sets a five-business-day response period | VERIFIED | RSA 91-A:4, I and IV(b), New Hampshire General Court |
| 21 | Book details: 19 chapters in four parts, 236 print pages, ISBNs and list prices; Amazon listings for the Kindle edition (ASIN B0HRM7CRPN), paperback (ASIN B0HRKT9YJC) and hardcover (ASIN B0HRMR7SNR); chapter contents, the four proposals and the quoted line from Chapter 19; the text’s use of “estimated” for the 300,000 figure | VERIFIED | Author’s manuscript and Amazon KDP title records, Nov. 14, 2026 |
Reach the editor directly. Confidentiality respected where possible.
granitestatereport@gmail.com · 603-931-9264
Editor’s note. Every factual claim above was checked against the sources in the fact-check table before publication. Rows marked ATTRIBUTED rest on news reports, law-firm summaries, a hall-of-fame biography or congressional testimony instead of primary documents, and estimates are labeled as estimates. GSR located no government-wide total of the agency lists as of Nov. 12, 2026; that is an absence of located evidence, and one may exist. The author of this article is the author of the book and benefits from its sale. This is an analytical piece built on documentary sources; no live interview appears. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when.
