CORTEZ – The U.S. Supreme Court decided 5-4 last week to overturn the 2011 conviction of former commercial fisherman John Yates for destroying undersized grouper in a federal fisheries investigation.
Yates, 62, was charged, convicted and served 30 days in jail for disposing of evidence under a federal law passed in the wake of the Enron fraud scandal that criminalizes destruction of certain types of evidence.
Second Place
That is so… Florida
2016
In an opinion laced with colorful maritime puns and citing Dr. Suess’ “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish,” the court wrote that 72 undersized grouper discovered on the Miss Katie by federal fisheries officers in 2007 are not “tangible objects” under the law, which makes it a crime to “knowingly alter, destroy, mutilate, conceal, cover up, falsify or make a false entry in any record, document or tangible object with the intent to impede or obstruct an investigation.”
“It’s been a long haul, and I’m happy, and I’m glad that somebody finally got the truth out there,”
Yates said last week at Off the Hook, the Cortez recycled furniture business he owns with his wife, Sandy Yates.
Yates holds little hope that he will return to the sea.
“I’d love to, but they forced me into early retirement,” he said, adding that the Cortez fleet is fully stocked with captains. “We own the business, that’s our income now.”
Yates is consulting with attorneys to see if he can recover lost wages, he said, and plans with his wife to take the first vacation they’ve had in several years this summer, inland, in a log cabin.
The Supreme Court decision may help other fishermen in a similar situation, he hopes.
“It would make them look at it a little bit harder if nothing else,” he said.
Close call
After oral arguments last year, Yates said he thought the decision would come back 9-0, but “5-4 is as good as 9-0,” he said.
During those arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined in ruling for Yates last week, told prosecuting attorney Roman Martinez that he made Yates “sound like a mob boss” in describing Yates as launching “a convoluted cover-up scheme to cover up the fact that he had destroyed the evidence. He enlisted other people, including his crew members, in executing that scheme and in lying to the law enforcement officers about it.”
Fisheries officers testified at trial that they told Yates to leave the fish on board as evidence and return to the Cortez docks, where the fish were to be seized. Three fish were missing when the catch was counted at the dock, accounting to court records.
Two justices who appeared to favor Yates in the 2014 arguments voted against him last week – Justice Antonin Scalia, who had asked, “What kind of a mad prosecutor would try to send this guy up for 20 years?” and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had quipped, “Perhaps Congress should have called this the Sarbanes-Oxley-Grouper Act.”
“I’m happy we got the win, but not with the opinion,” said Sandy Yates, a former legal assistant, adding she was surprised to have “lost Scalia.”
Because the court noted in its opinion that more than 32 months passed before criminal charges were filed against Yates, he may file an abuse of process claim, she said.
“I don’t know if they would pay damages or not, but I would like the justice department to take note that you should not be abusing fishermen with threats of 30 years of prison for undersized fish,” she said.
The court wrote in the majority opinion that by the time Yates was indicted for destroying property to prevent a federal seizure and for destroying, concealing, and covering up undersized fish to impede a federal investigation, “the minimum legal length for Gulf red grouper had been lowered from 20 inches to 18 inches. No measured fish in Yates’ catch fell below that limit.”
The Yates decision could have implications on a case decided last month by the Florida Supreme Court that left the commercial gill net ban in place, she said.
“The fishing industry hasn’t got a good hit in a long time,” she said. “The net ban people need to continue to a higher level.”
The ruling
In reversing the decision by the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the justices examined the meaning and context of the term “tangible object” in the federal law under which Yates was charged, using time-honored methods of interpreting statutes and legal precedent.
They also had some fun.
“A fish is, of course, a discrete thing that possesses physical form,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, citing Dr. Seuss’ “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.”
Kagan also cited a case in which dead crocodiles were used as evidence to support a smuggling conviction, writing, “Congress realizes that in a game of free association with ‘record’ and ‘document,’ it will never think of all the other things – including crocodiles and fish – whose destruction or alteration can (less frequently but just as effectively) thwart law enforcement… and so Congress adds the general term ‘or tangible object’ again, exactly because such things do not spring to mind.”
“Who wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if a neighbor, when asked to identify something similar to a ‘record’ or ‘document,’ said ‘crocodile?’ Justice Samuel Alito wrote, concurring with the majority.
While the verbs in the law – “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 filekeeping,” Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.
The court also considered the law’s title, “Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations and bankruptcy,” writing in its opinion that the title “points toward filekeeping rather than fish.”
The court continued, “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. But it would cut §1519 loose from its financial-fraud mooring to hold that it encompasses any and all objects, whatever their size or significance, destroyed with obstructive intent.”
The court concluded that it would not widen the interpretation of the law to cover destruction of all types of evidence.
“Leaving that important decision to Congress, we hold that a “tangible object” within §1519’s compass is one used to record or preserve information.”
