Senate Democrats are demanding that Republicans abandon their hope of using a criminal justice reform bill to expand mens rea, a legal doctrine that prevents defendants from being charged with crimes they didn't know they were committing, and their opposition may end up shifting [shafting?] the bill even though Republicans control both the House and Senate.

Democrats have charged that Republicans are pushing for the language to make it harder to bring charges against companies, and say they're missing the point of the bill.

"It has nothing to do with sentencing and rehabilitation," Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the lead Democratic negotiators of the criminal justice reform package, told the Washington Examiner. "It's a voyage into a whole new territory that the bill doesn't cover, which is the underlying substantive federal criminal laws. If they want to go there, we've got lots we'd like to look at."

Privately, some Republicans grumble that the legislation does more to advance the priorities of the Democratic minority than it does to advance traditional conservative criminal justice reforms, which would reduce the number of federal crimes, especially those committed unwittingly. That's why the Democratic pushback against the GOP's mens rea reform request might make it even more difficult to move the bill.

If Cornyn could add the mens rea language to the bill, he might reasonably count on the support of at least Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. But Senate Democrats are so far refusing to do so because they worry the provision would make it more difficult to prosecute corporate executives in a variety of cases.

Some Republicans and outside activists hope that House Republicans will pass the criminal intent legislation as part of their reform package, believing that Democrats won't kill the entire criminal justice reform simply because of that policy complaint. But Whitehouse suggested he'd be willing to see the whole bill go down rather than agree to that change.