Charles Eric Hintz*
Abstract
When a plaintiff files a civil lawsuit in federal court, her complaint must satisfy certain minimum standards. Specifically, under the prevailing understanding of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a), a complaint must plead sufficient factual matter to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face, rather than mere conclusory statements. Given the significantly higher stakes involved in criminal cases, one might think that an even more robust requirement would exist in that context. But in fact a weaker pleading standard reigns. Under the governing interpretation of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 7(c), indictments that simply parrot the language of a statute are often sufficient.
As this Article shows, however, that pleading balance is misguided. The drafters of Rule 7(c) designed the Rule to be at least as stringent as Rule 8(a), as demonstrated by the text of Rules 7(c) and 8(a), the history of American pleading, the original Advisory Committee Note to Rule 7(c), and the drafting history of the Criminal Rules. And the drafters’ original design should govern today, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s amplification of the civil pleading standard in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal. All of that means that our current pleading regime should be rethought, that criminal defendants should receive more protections and information about the case against them than they presently do, and that policy arguments—which seem to favor a stronger criminal pleading standard—are all the more critical.
* Copyright © 2021 Charles Eric Hintz. Eric Hintz is a Quattrone Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. I am grateful for the incredibly helpful input into, or feedback about, this Article provided by my colleagues at the Quattrone Center, especially Asli Bashir and Paul Heaton; Stephen B. Burbank; Kim Forde-Mazrui; Catherine Struve; the participants in the Fall 2020 Quattrone Center Advisory Board Meeting, the Spring 2021 Penn State Law Review Symposium, and the July 27, 2021 Penn Law Faculty Ad Hoc Workshop; and the many friends and family members who have read drafts of this work or listened to presentations of the research. I am also profoundly thankful to the Penn State Law Review for its invaluable support in preparing this Article for publication.
Any errors are my own, and nothing herein is meant to suggest endorsement of the arguments in this Article by anyone other than me