Supreme Court To Consider The Case Of The Missing Fish
Today the Supreme Court takes up a fishy case. Literally. The court will be hearing the case of a commercial fisherman who was charged with destroying evidence by disposing of undersize fish.
NPR tells the story of John Yates, a commercial fisherman who was fishing for grouper off the coast of Florida. Yates and his crew were fishing in federal waters when their boat was boarded by a Florida Fish and Wildlife officer, John Jones. Jones believed that some of the fish in the catch were undersized, so he measured, and found 72 grouper that were smaller than the 20 inch minimum. Jones ordered Yates to keep the fish, but when the boat returned to shore, Jones determined that the fish in Yates’ crate were not the same ones he had measured. Yates was convicted of destroying evidence to impede a federal prosecution. He received a 30 day jail sentence. He has appealed that sentence all the way to the Supreme Court.
Yates argues that the law that was used to convict him was intended for documents, not fish. The Supreme Court has to decide whether to side with Yates, who has the backing of what NPR calls a “small army of supporters,” including the business community, or to side with the government.
The law in question, known as Sarbanes-Oxley, was passed in 2002. According to Talk Radio News Service, the law was passed in response to the Enron scandal, where documents and other evidence that showed corporate wrongdoing was destroyed in order to impede the investigation. The question the Supreme Court will have to answer is whether the term “tangible object” used in the law was intended only to cover business related documents, or whether its language is more far reaching, covering objects such as fish. The Associated Press says Former Representative Mike Oxley, who helped write the law, has submitted a brief to the court saying that the intent of the law was to cover business records, and items such as hard drives and CD’s, not fish.
The Obama administration will argue before the Supreme Court that the law was written to cover gaps that existed in federal laws concerning destruction of evidence. The law makes it a crime to destroy “any record, document, or tangible object” with the purpose of impeding an investigation. But Yates’ lawyer will argue to the court that the statute only applies to “records and documents.” Attorney John Badalamenti said that the law clearly only applies to business records, noting that the title of the section under which Yates was charged is “Destruction and Alteration of Records.”
The Supreme Court was asked to weigh in on several issues related to the case, but the court only agreed to review whether Yates was properly informed that Sarbanes-Oxley applied to his situation.
This case marks yet another time in recent weeks that the Supreme Court has been the center of an off beat story. A short time ago, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia weighed in on whether he thought Supreme Court proceedings should be televised. As reported in the Inquisitr, this led to Last Week Tonight host John Oliver proposing that audio of Supreme Court proceedings be accompanied by video of the justices portrayed by dogs. Is the Supreme Court going to the dogs, or is there just something fishy about the cases they are taking?
