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Posted on 02/25/2015 9:53:08 PM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
Washington, DC (February 25, 2015) – This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Yates v. United States. This case highlights the problem of overcriminalization and specifically the dangerous consequences stemming from prosecutorial expansion of the laws passed by Congress. In Yates v. United States, the Court today rejected the government's use of an overly broad interpretation of a post-Enron anti-shredding statute (18 U.S.C. §1519), a statute that provides for up to a 20-year prison sentence, to prosecute a fisherman for the disappearance of some undersized fish from his shipping vessel.
While the dissent differed in its interpretation of the anti-shredding statute's language in this case, it noted that the matter "brings to the surface the real issue: overcriminalization and excessive punishment in the U.S. Code." And the dissent went on, "[s]till and all, I tend to think, for the reasons the plurality gives, that §1519 is a bad law – too broad and undifferentiated, with too-high maximum penalties, which gives prosecutors too much leverage and sentencers too much discretion." Indeed, the dissent expressly regrets that this statute is "unfortunately not an outlier, but an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code."
The government's argument, rejected today by the Court, was that the anti-shredding statute's proscription of the following conduct encompassed the missing fish: "knowingly alters destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence" a federal investigation. As Justice Alito explained in his concurrence, "…while many of §1519's verbs— 'alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in'—could apply to far-flung nouns such as salamanders or sand dunes, the term 'makes a false entry in' makes no sense outside of file keeping. Finally, §1519's title—'Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy'—also points toward file keeping rather than fish."
NACDL Executive Director Norman L. Reimer, who has been working with a broad array of several groups on the issue of overcriminalization, said: "Although this particular case was decided on statutory construction grounds, the real issue in cases such as this is the scourge of overcriminalization in America. And those are concerns that even the dissent explicitly recognized. Sooner or later, society will have to confront that problem head on. It is noteworthy that Congress is beginning to do so. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has a long and proud history of working to combat precisely the type of prosecutorial overreach that the Supreme Court put a stop to in the Yates case today. NACDL will continue to oppose overcriminalization, in all its forms, wherever and whenever it rears its head."
NACDL President Theodore Simon said: "It is noteworthy that this case demonstrates the critical importance of public defenders and pro bono amicus counsel. In the absence of the availability of a public defender, Mr. Yates surely would not have had the resources to fight this unjust prosecution all the way to the Supreme Court, leaving prosecutors with the all-too-unfair, and all-too-frequently deployed, leverage to extract a plea bargain where he should never have been prosecuted under the statute in the first instance. That would have left the inappropriate use of this statute intact and as a continuing and unjustified threat to the liberty of all Americans."
William N. Shepherd, Partner at Holland & Knight, LLP, and author of NACDL's amicus brief said: "With today's decision, the Court has slowed prosecutorial overreach. Aggressive prosecution cannot rely on tortured legal analysis but must rest on solid facts and straightforward law. Today's opinion shows that the Court has joined Congress and its Overcriminalization Task Force in addressing this growing 'emblem of a deeper pathology' in criminal justice. The ballooning of today's criminal code means that everyday Americans face new, unforeseen risks of prosecution. Hammurabi is known throughout the ages for the first public criminal code written centuries ago. Today's opinion helps us return to that ideal that citizens will know the laws by which we all must abide."
Dead link.
Such small minds seek out minutia to find the devil in the details to get convictions based on forgetting to dot an "i" or cross a "t". . . while missing the fact that someone is stealing the safe from right behind them while they are examining the books for minor errors with a microscope!
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Where I come from “undersized fish” are called bait.
Outrageous that throwing fish back in the water is punished worse than murder.
Supreme Court Justice Kagan uses Dr. Seuss in case argumentBy Phillip Swarts - The Washington Times - Wednesday, February 25, 2015
When the Supreme Court announced its decision Wednesday on whether a fisherman should be charged under Wall Street regulatory laws, Justice Elena Kagan decided to include an unusual judicial argument: Dr. Seuss.
In 2007 in Florida, law enforcement officials confronted fisherman John Yates, saying he had caught several red groupers that were too small. Mr. Yates then tossed the fish overboard. But he was charged under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which sought to punish the destruction of physical evidence in wake of the Enron scandal where accountants shredded thousands of documents.
In a 5-4 decision announced Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was meant to apply only to records or information documents.
But in her dissent, Justice Kagan argued that fish should be included in the “tangible object” category of evidence the law describes.
“A fish is, of course, a discrete thing that possesses physical form,” she wrote. “See generally Dr. Seuss, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (1960).”
During oral arguments in November, things sometimes took a turn for the absurd, as justices debated the legal nature of fish and whether a fish could count as a record if information was carved into its scales.
We are in a race to find the most insane decisions from this once august body. . . four of them are certifiable.
My girlfriend and I created this proposed addendum for the IDC-10, the listing of disease codes, because they obviously forgot to include it when they did the update from the IDC-9 back in October from 17,000 diagnostic codes to over 155,000:
321.0 SPLAT Liberal Cerebral Defenestration (LCD) or Liberal Acquired Brain Absence (LABA), Complete loss of rationality, cognition, and cerebration due to indiscriminately keeping one's mind so far open that the brain falls out. First and subsequent encounters.
I know you can shred pork...not sure about fish.
A glass-ectomy is when you cut your bellybutton out and put a piece of glass in there so when you have your head up your arse, you can see where you’re going.
Come on. If there’s one thing Kagan knows about it’s shredding fish ;)
“They find the word they want to apply without understanding the context in which the word lies.”..
To quote a once famous “attorney” when asked a question with the word “is” in the question, he answered, “It depends on what your interpretation of “IS’ is”....
“They find the word they want to apply without understanding the context in which the word lies.”..
To quote a once famous “attorney” when asked a question with the word “is” in the question, he answered, “It depends on what your interpretation of “IS’ is”....
You can also tune a piano, but can you tune a fish?
Poorly written and ill-conceived laws become tools of vindictiveness and oppression.
Did anybody read Scalias’ and Thomas’ dissenting opinions?
I didn’t. Summery?
Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. I haven’t read the full dissent.
REO Speedwagon agrees.
Kagan was arguing not that a fish is a document, but that it is a "tangible object." Her dissent was joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas. The majority opinion is by Ginsburg.
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