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Undersized Grouper Case Lands In Supreme Court

Posted by samzenpus on from the ine-serious-fish-story dept.

An anonymous reader writes The Supremes have decided to hear a case regarding whether groupers are 'tangible articles' under the Sarbanes-Oxley law. The issue is that the crew of the Miss Katie was caught with undersized fish. A marine fisheries officer wrote them a ticket and put the fish in a box that the captain was ordered to turn in when he got ashore. Rather than do this, they threw out the undersized fish and replaced them with bigger ones. Prosecutors, rather than charging them with offenses of catching undersized fish (which would have resulted in a fine and a small jail sentence), went after them under the Sarbanes-Oxley law which forbids the destruction of "any record, document, or tangible object" and which could result in a 20 year prison sentence, though the prosecutor only asked for two years on this one. Lawyers are arguing over whether "tangible object" here is something that could contain records, or whether it's any object whatsoever that might be evidence. So far in comments, many of the conservative justices, including Roberts, Alito and Scalia, have expressed skepticism as to whether this would lead to overcriminalization for petty crimes and would give prosecutors undue leverage given all the things Sarbanes-Oxley can apply to. They also question whether this was intended in the law, given that "tangible object" was listed in a context including documents and records and appears to have been only contemplated in terms of servers, DVDs, or other tangible objects that might contain documents or records. Meanwhile, Kagan and Kennedy appear amenable to a more literal reading of the statute, given that groupers are in fact touchable and that makes them "tangible objects" under the ordinary meaning of those words.

12 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. If they're going literal.... by LordLucless · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they're going literal, then the groupers weren't destroyed. They were just placed in an indeterminate location. Hell, take it up a notch, and rely on the second law of thermodynamics.

    Stupidly vague laws resulting in legislative over-reach is one of many reasons the law is an ass.

    --
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    1. Re:If they're going literal.... by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not vague, it's inclusive. They meant to criminalize the destruction of evidence in federal criminal investigations and that's what they did. Had they meant something different, they'd have chosen different words. The "strict constructionists" on the court are favoring the idea that the law doesn't mean exactly what it says, but some they're-going-to-define-it-for-us subset of what it says? This makes sense to you?

      Nevermind the consequences if they limit the meaning -- it will be legal to destroy most kinds of evidence in a criminal investigation. It's all A-OK if it didn't contain financial records right? Right?

    2. Re:If they're going literal.... by diamondmagic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A constitutionalist (you know, the supreme law of the land, the thing they all swore to uphold) would also notice that no part of the Constitution granted authority to do such a thing: An application of Sarbanes-Oxley needs to involve interstate commerce in some fashion.

      Fishing is distinctly intrastate commerce (if commerce at all!), and cannot be covered by federal law. Criminal law is supposed to be a state issue.

      The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution also requires "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." I doubt 20 years prison listed in the statute is ever warranted.

      --
      Wonder what the public key field is for?
    3. Re:If they're going literal.... by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Honestly - I can still partially forgive those, it's specialized technical knowledge. In theory those who would regulate something should damn well get educated about it first, but people outside those fields usually won't have a complete understanding of them.

      I get more upset by the ones who want to regulate things like sex and female reproductive issues while having absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Todd Aiken who seems to think that falopian tubes can tell whether a woman consented or not, or the congresswoman who thought a rape-kit is something that emergency rooms use to undo the act of rape !
      Apparently she has never read a news story, or watched a crime show.

      Not knowing specialized technical information is forgivable (at least - if your NOT actively regulating it) but not knowing basic general knowledge about something you hold that much opinion about - that's unforgiveable, especially in those who have the power to propose their opinions as laws.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    4. Re:If they're going literal.... by BradMajors · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The SEC hasn't used false certification against executives from any of the major banks suspected of misleading the public about their finances during the crisis."

      Apparently the law was intended to be used against fishermen and not CEOs of banks.

    5. Re:If they're going literal.... by ttucker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      here we have a case of a fisherman keeping an undersize fish.

      More accurately, here we have a case of a fisherman being accused of keeping undersized fish. The officer who accused him of doing so left the only evidence whatsoever of the crime with the accused. Upon discovering that the evidence indicated no crime had occurred, he made the outlandish claim that the evidence had been tampered with, having no evidence besides his testimony given as support.

    6. Re:If they're going literal.... by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously, though, it's not even a matter of Congress misunderstanding the law. It's a matter of the prosecutors (and even more scarily the courts) completely subverting the law through overly literal interpretation.

      Though what disturbs me the most about this is that it may be the first non-unanimous Supreme Court decision in my lifetime where I 100% agree with the "conservative judges."

      Seems like the prosecutors could have gone with a good old "destruction of evidence" and not had to delve into Sarbanes-Oxley (which while having many good intentions is in so many ways a totally fucked up law that has made billions for a few financial and auditing consulting companies and cost tens of billions for the rest.)

    7. Re:If they're going literal.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Honestly - I can still partially forgive those, it's specialized technical knowledge."

      Yeah, who wouldn't think internet runs in tubes. I mean, it's very special knowledge. A bit like cheese is made of milk and milk comes from cows is special agricultural knowledge.

      I could forget them not knowing how electricity works, how data transfer using electricity works, or what is done to the milk after it's out of the cow (heck, I don't know this exactly), but confusing tubes and internet is like claiming agricultural expertise, telling cheese comes from chickens, and then basing laws on that. How about "chickens must be milked 2 times a day to ensure their well being".

    8. Re:If they're going literal.... by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah. Screwup by the fisheries officer. If he had secured the box with some sort of official "evidence" tape to make it tamperproof, this never would have gotten to this point. Seal the box, get the signature of the accused testifying that they have the sealed box, and it's ok to leave it in their possession until they get to shore. (Most of these fisheries enforcement officers work in small/medium high-speed power boats, so it would be impractical for them to take aboard all the illegal fish they find for safekeeping as evidence.)

      However, in this case they have the testimony of the crew that the captain ordered them to throw out the (purportedly) undersized fish. So I think the Feds are still going to win based on that. It's not solely the officer's word that a crime was committed.

    9. Re:If they're going literal.... by NicBenjamin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      An "outlandish claim" that was proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a fair trial. Mostly because the guy who actually threw the fish out of the boat testified that he was ordered to do so by the captain.

      Nobody with a brain in their heads is claiming this guy did not deserve to get in trouble for what he did. They're claiming that the government charged him under the wrong statute.

    10. Re:If they're going literal.... by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nevermind the consequences if they limit the meaning -- it will be legal to destroy most kinds of evidence in a criminal investigation. It's all A-OK if it didn't contain financial records right?

      This story seems to mix up the traditional concept of destruction-of-evidence with a very specific subset of that crime applicable under SOX.

      The prosecutors simply went too far in pushing for that specific crime, and therein lies the abuse - No different than how they try to make every case of plain ol' traditional fraud into a federal "wire fraud" offense when it involves the use of a computer (ie, basically all of it in the modern world), or how any crime involving more than a single person qualifies under RICO, or to pick a golden oldie, nailing Al Capone for tax fraud. Might what the crew did technically count under SOX? Maybe, maybe not - But SOX doesn't exist to serve as a bigger stick in all situations; it exists specifically to prosecute otherwise difficult to prove "white collar" crimes where most non-accountants can't even comprehend who did what to whom.

      Prosecutors need to stick with the crime that actually happened here, punish the crew appropriately, and lose the "get creative with charges and see what sticks" bullshit that has become far, far too common in today's legal system. When the law becomes nothing more than a set of technicalities to use to punish dissidence as their whim, do we really wonder why no one actually respects the law anymore?

  2. Re:Overreach... by Dahamma · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Total overreach, and I don't understand why they couldn't have gone with some simpler "destruction of evidence" charge (which I'm sure is still fairly serious and would turn a fine into a prison sentence).

    Though if you read TFA he was sentenced to 30 days under a statute that could have given 20 years. The fact is he was ordered to preserve and turn over the evidence of his minor violation and he destroyed it, which was stupid and clearly worse than the original crime. The judge was actually pretty reasonable with the sentence, it was just the prosecutor who picked the wrong statue to prosecute...