It is notoriously difficult—if not foolish—to predict the outcome of a Supreme Court case from the questions the justices pose at oral argument. The case of Yates v. United States, concerning a commercial fisherman who was convicted and sentenced under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, is no exception. And yet, after today’s argument (transcript here), it appears that some members of the Court are grappling for a way to overturn Yates’s conviction without completely rewriting the statute.
Three years after Mr. Yates received an administrative fine for harvesting undersized fish, the U.S. Attorney indicted him for destroying a “record, document, or tangible thing” under the “anti-shredding” provision of Sarbanes-Oxley. The “tangible things” at issue, the government insisted, were undersized red grouper Yates evidently ordered crew members to throw overboard.
Although the government seemingly got the better of the statutory interpretation argument today, a number of justices appeared uncomfortable with the breadth of the government’s application of the statute. While conceding that the government made some good arguments, Justice Alito nevertheless told the government’s attorney, “[Y]ou are really asking the Court to swallow something that is pretty hard to swallow.” Many justices were concerned that the statute contains a 20-year maximum sentence and applies to any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States.
Even more troubling, the government attorney informed the Court that once a decision is made to prosecute, the U.S. Attorney’s Manual recommends that the “prosecutor should charge the offense that’s the most severe under the law.” That assertion drew concern from many justices, including Justice Scalia, who responded that if that is the DOJ’s position, then the Court would need to be much more careful about how extensively and broadly it construes severe statutes in the future. Justice Kennedy even went so far as to question whether the Court should even mention the concept of prosecutorial discretion ever again.
For his part, Justice Breyer exhibited keen interest in void-for-vagueness objections to the statute, expressing his concern that the language of the anti-shredding provision is so broad that it encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. Although counsel for Yates did not devote very much space to that issue in his merits briefs, that was precisely the issue that WLF focused on as amicus curiae.
