Cite as: 575 U. S. ____ (2015) 13 Opinion of the Court statute “would need to be read to require . . . that the defendant take the money with ‘intent to steal or purloin.’ ” Ibid. C Section 875(c), as noted, requires proof that a communication was transmitted and that it contained a threat. The “presumption in favor of a scienter requirement should apply to each of the statutory elements that criminalize otherwise innocent conduct.” X-Citement Video, 513 U. S., at 72 (emphasis added). The parties agree that a defendant under Section 875(c) must know that he is transmitting a communication. But communicating something is not what makes the conduct “wrongful.” Here “the crucial element separating legal innocence from wrongful conduct” is the threatening nature of the communication. Id., at 73. The mental state requirement must therefore apply to the fact that the communication contains a threat. Elonis’s conviction, however, was premised solely on how his posts would be understood by a reasonable person. Such a “reasonable person” standard is a familiar feature of civil liability in tort law, but is inconsistent with “the conventional requirement for criminal conduct— awareness of some wrongdoing.” Staples, 511 U. S., at 606–607 (quoting United States v. Dotterweich, 320 U. S. 277, 281 (1943); emphasis added). Having liability turn on whether a “reasonable person” regards the communication as a threat—regardless of what the defendant thinks— “reduces culpability on the all-important element of the crime to negligence,” Jeffries, 692 F. 3d, at 484 (Sutton, J., dubitante), and we “have long been reluctant to infer that a negligence standard was intended in criminal statutes,” Rogers v. United States, 422 U. S. 35, 47 (1975) (Marshall, J., concurring) (citing Morissette, 342 U. S. 246). See 1 C. Torcia, Wharton’s Criminal Law §27, pp. 171–172 (15th