Absolute liability
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case Estes v. Commonwealth (1997)
Most recently applied in Staples v. Commonwealth (April 2014)
Effective: January 1, 1975 History: Created 1974 Ky
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
A person may be guilty of an offense without having one (1) of the culpable mental states defined in KRS 501.020 only when:
(1) The offense is a violation or a misdemeanor as defined in KRS 500.080 and no particular culpable mental state is included within the definition of the offense; or (2) The offense is defined by a statute other than this Penal Code and the statute clearly indicates a legislative purpose to impose absolute liability for the conduct described.
Official source: Kentucky General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Kentucky statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.