Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-11-502

Ignorance or mistake of fact

Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case State v. McPherson (1994)

Most recently applied in United States v. Wilson (February 2008)

Acts 1989, ch. 591, § 1; 1995, ch. 495, § 1; 2013, ch. 337, § 1.

How often courts cite this section

citing decisions per year

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.

(1) Except in prosecutions for violations of §§ 39-13-504(a)(4) and 39-13-522, ignorance or mistake of fact is a defense to prosecution if the ignorance or mistake negates the culpable mental state of the charged offense.

(2) Although a person's ignorance or mistake of fact may constitute a defense to the offense charged, the person may be convicted of the offense for which the person would be guilty if the fact were as the person believed.

(3) It shall not be a defense to prosecution for a violation of § 39-13-514 or § 39-13-529(a), (b)(1) or (b)(2) that the person charged was ignorant or mistaken as to the age of a minor.

Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.