Lee Carrell v. United States (Revised Version)

*317Opinion for the court by Associate Judge Easterly.

Opinion by Associate Judge Thompson, concurring in part and dissenting in part, at page 330.

Easterly, Associate Judge:

We return to this case, sitting en banc, to determine what, if anything, the government must prove vis-á-vis a defendant’s mens rea, or state of mind, in order to obtain a conviction for threats (misdemeanor or felony).1 Our threats statutes do not give us much guidance; neither expressly includes a requisite culpable mental state. And in the wake of this statutory silence, we developed two strands of case law: one indicating…