Liberty University Law Review Volume 12 Issue 2 Article 6 January 2018 Imprisoning the Innocent: The "Knowledge of Law" Fiction Phillip D. Kline Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lu_law_review Recommended Citation Kline, Phillip D. (2018) "Imprisoning the Innocent: The "Knowledge of Law" Fiction," Liberty University Law Review: Vol. 12 : Iss. 2 , Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lu_law_review/vol12/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Liberty University School of Law at Scholars Crossing. It has been accepted for inclusion in Liberty University Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholars Crossing. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ARTICLE IMPRISONING THE INNOCENT: THE “KNOWLEDGE OF LAW” FICTION Phillip D. Kline† I. THE PRESENT PROBLEM OF PUNISHING THE MORALLY INNOCENT Disorientation alarmed him. Ocie Mills was accustomed to deciding his direction and defining his purpose. But today, Monday, May 15, 1989, Ocie and his son Cary were reporting to prison, adjudged felons by the country they loved.1 *** Tension between individual liberty and the state, and the inherent metaphysical mysteries of that tension,2 are at least as old as humankind’s earliest discovered written stories. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, written from circa. 2150-1400 BC and considered the most ancient example of literature, † B.A. Central Missouri State University (1982); J.D., University of Kansas (1987). Phill Kline is an Associate Professor at Liberty University School of Law where he teaches Evidence, Bioethics and Law and Trial Practice. He served as a member of the Kansas House of Representatives (1993-2001), Kansas Attorney General (2003-2007) and Johnson County District Attorney (2007-2009).