State v. Grant: Is Intent an Essential Element of Criminal Attempt in Maine?

Criminal attempt is a conceptually difficult area of the criminal law. Efforts to develop a judicial and statutory framework for the imposition of criminal attempt liability have resulted in analytical difficulties from which sound policy has not emerged. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has recently encountered this problem in State v. Grant. Liability for criminal attempt has traditionally been limited to those situations in which the actor is shown to have had the specific intent to engage in conduct that constituted a substantial step toward the commission of the substantive crime. Because of this requirement, courts have reasoned that criminal attempt liability may only be imposed for substantive crimes for which the culpable mental states are either intent or knowledge. In State v. Grant, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court followed this rationale and held that attempted reckless or negligent homicide (manslaughter) is a logically impossible crime. Support for an alternative conclusion, that attempted reckless or negligent crimes are, in fact, possible, may be derived from the language of the criminal attempt statute itself and from Law Court decisions other than Grant. An interpretation of section 152 different from that relied on in Grant would release the court from the confines of the presently accepted view of attempt law. The purpose of this Note is to examine the law of criminal attempt and to demonstrate that a different interpretation of section 152, based on the actor's conduct rather than the conduct's result, is reasonable and logical given the statutory language.