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Washington • From the budget to immigration reform to new education policy, a well-established pattern has emerged from Utah's two Republican senators. The institutionalist, Sen. Orrin Hatch, often joins bipartisan groups pushing for big reform packages, while the renegade, Sen. Mike Lee, stands in opposition, arguing the legislation isn't conservative enough.

But when it comes to criminal-justice reform, there has been a role reversal.

Lee is a primary sponsor of a reform package that has the backing of President Barack Obama and Senate Democratic leaders. It reduces minimum-mandatory sentences for drug crimes and pushes for more rehabilitation programs to reduce the number of people incarcerated. He's spending considerable efforts to persuade his Republican colleagues to come on board with the hope of moving a bill within the next six weeks. If it doesn't get going by then, it's likely dead.

"The more Republican momentum we can get behind this," Lee said, "the better off we are going to be."

He can scratch Hatch off that list.

His Utah colleague has taken a hard-line stance, refusing to support any reform deal that doesn't include a new standard for criminal intent. He's not talking about crimes such as murder or rape, in which the criminal intent standard is written into the law. Hatch wants to set a bar for the untold number of criminal codes with no standard at all. His favorite example is that in a federal park it is a crime to walk a dog on a leash longer than 6 feet.

Hatch has drafted a bill that would set the default standard at the highest level possible. To be convicted, prosecutors would have to show that the person "willfully" intended to break the law. If Congress believes that's too tough, then it can tweak it, one criminal code at a time.

"If you don't have a willful-intent requirement, they can do anything to you," Hatch said. "It gives those who are unjust a free ride in prosecuting other people."

This idea has been around for about a decade, and it has become a rallying cry among conservatives. They call it "mens rea" reform, which is Latin for "guilty mind." Lee is a co-sponsor of Hatch's bill, and he'd be fine with putting it in with the sentencing and prison reforms he's helped craft, but he knows that Democrats may withdraw from the negotiations if it is added.

Lee went to a meeting with Obama at the White House a few months back where among the first things Senate Democrats told the president is mens rea reform can't be in the final package.

Their concern is that a willful-intent standard may make it particularly difficult for prosecutors to go after corporations for violating complex environmental regulations, because they could argue that they simply didn't understand the law and therefore didn't intend to violate it.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who is a former federal prosecutor, is among the negotiators trying to block the inclusion of Hatch's idea.

"The idea that to this good effort we're going to attach an effort that basically gives corporations carte blanche to violate laws that have been set up to protect the public simply because it's hard to prove the state of mind of a corporate defendant, that is asking an awful lot," Whitehouse said.

And changing the standard one code at a time is particularly daunting. Just attempting to count the number of criminal codes overwhelmed the Congressional Research Service in 2013.

Lee doesn't want to sabotage the rest of the bill, so he's having to forgo Hatch's support, though he noted a mens rea proposal is in the House bill. If both the House and Senate pass similar but different criminal-justice-reform laws, they'll have to be reconciled and he could fight for it then.

But the more immediate battle, the one that may determine if this bill even comes up for a vote, is focused on whether it is too soft on crime.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has called the measure the "criminal leniency" bill and said reducing sentences for drug crimes will leave more criminals on the streets.

"It's deeply divisive within the Senate and the House as well, in part because there are a large number of senators and congressmen who don't think criminals are victims; they think criminals are criminals," he said in a speech last week at the Hudson Institute.

The federal reform mirrors what states such as Utah and Texas have recently passed, shifting more perpetrators toward treatment programs for drug addiction and mental-health issues, hoping to lower the prison population and the recidivism rate.

The bill also has a retroactive provision, allowing inmates to get a hearing with the same judge who oversaw their trial to determine if their sentence should be reduced. Those with a violent past won't qualify.

Lee sees this as the Weldon Angelos provision. Angelos is serving a 55-year sentence for selling marijuana while carrying a gun because of minimum-mandatory laws. He had no criminal history. The judge on the case, Paul Cassell, who is now a law professor at the University of Utah, called it "one of the most troubling that I ever faced in my five years on the federal bench."

Lee has advocated for Angelos' release.

"I've never met anybody who thought that sentence made sense," he said.

Hatch acknowledges that minimum-mandatory laws have sometimes produced sentences he considers overly harsh, but these retroactive provisions concern him as well.

With each passing day, Lee knows the chance shrinks to pass his bill, which was three years in the making. But he's not giving up. He's pulling aside senators during votes on other matters, and he's making the case that reducing prison populations is a conservative goal worth fighting for, even if it requires negotiating with Democrats.

Twitter: @mattcanham