A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out the conviction of a Florida fisherman who had a crewman toss several small fish overboard into the Gulf of Mexico.
Though split over their reasoning, five justices agreed that a law written to protect investors by banning the destruction of corporate evidence did not apply to the actions in 2007 of fishing captain John Yates.
“A fish is no doubt an object that is tangible; fish can be seen, caught, and handled, and a catch, as this case illustrates, is vulnerable to destruction,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote. “But it would cut (the law) loose from its financial-fraud mooring to hold that it encompasses any and all objects, whatever their size or significance, destroyed with obstructive intent.”
Instead, Ginsburg wrote on behalf of herself and three other justices, the so-called Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in 2002 targets only the destruction of tangible objects “used to record or preserve information.”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion, noting that the case “can and should be resolved on narrow grounds.”
Yates was convicted and sentenced to jail and three years of supervised release following an August 2007 investigation into his fishing activities in the Gulf of Mexico. A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer had boarded Yates’ boat, the “Miss Katie,” and allegedly counted 72 red grouper less than 20 inches in length, the minimum size limit for red grouper.
The investigator issued Yates a citation and instructed him not to disturb the undersized fish. Instead, Yates allegedly instructed his crew to throw undersized fish overboard and replace them with larger fish. A crew member testified against Yates, while Yates denied the charge.
After the boat returned to shore, inspectors came to conclude the fish left on board had been swapped.
The key question involved the use of a federal law against Yates that prohibits the destruction of a “record, document or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct or influence” a government investigation.
That statute was written by Congress in 2002, with Wall Street and financial crooks in mind. Lawmakers, in the wake of investigations into Enron and other corporations, wrote what was widely seen as an anti-document shredding provision into the larger Sarbanes-Oxley financial overhaul bill.
“The government acknowledges that (the law) was intended to prohibit, in particular, corporate document-shredding to hide evidence of financial wrongdoing,” Ginsburg noted, recounting how Enron’s outside auditor, Arthur Anderson LLP, had “systematically destroyed potentially incriminating documents.”
The lawmakers, though, did not define what they meant by “tangible object.”
Powerful business interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed friend-of-the-court briefs on Yates’ behalf, as did the former Ohio congressman, Michael Oxley, who helped write the law in question. From the other side, the Obama administration argued for a more expansive reading of what tangible object means, as a tool for prosecutors.
“We are persuaded that an aggressive interpretation of ‘tangible object’ must be rejected,” Ginsburg wrote.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion on behalf of herself and four other justices.
“A fisherman, like John Yates, who dumps undersized fish to avoid a fine is no less blameworthy than one who shreds his vessel’s catch log for the same reason,” Kagan wrote.
Email: mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @MichaelDoyle10.
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