Pugin v. GarlandPugin v. Garland
(Slip Opinion)
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
PUGIN v. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 22-23. Argued April 17, 2023—Decided June 22, 2023*
Held: An offense may “relat[e] to obstruction of justice” under
Pugin‘s and Cordero-Garcia‘s contrary arguments lack merit. First, even if a specific prohibition in
No. 22-23, 19 F. 4th 437, affirmed; No. 22-331, 44 F. 4th 1181, reversed and remanded.
KAVANAUGH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, BARRETT, and JACKSON, JJ., joined. JACKSON, J., filed a concurring opinion. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GORSUCH, J., joined, and in which KAGAN, J., joined as to all but Part III.
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 22-23 and 22-331
JEAN FRANCOIS PUGIN, PETITIONER
v.
MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL, PETITIONER
v.
FERNANDO CORDERO-GARCIA, AKA FERNANDO CORDERO
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI
[June 22, 2023]
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH delivered the opinion of the Court.
Federal law provides that noncitizens convicted of an “aggravated felony” are removable from the United States. The definition of “aggravated felony” includes federal or state offenses “relating to obstruction of justice.”
We conclude that an offense may “relat[e] to obstruction of justice” under
I
This case stems from two immigration proceedings. Fernando Cordero-Garcia is a citizen of Mexico. In 2009, Cordero-Garcia was convicted of several California offenses, including dissuading a witness from reporting a crime. Jean Francois Pugin is a citizen of Mauritius. In 2014, Pugin was convicted of the Virginia offense of being an accessory after the fact to a felony.
As relevant here, the U. S. Department of Homeland Security charged both Cordero-Garcia and Pugin as removable from the United States on the ground that they had convictions for aggravated felonies—namely, offenses “relating to obstruction of justice.” See
Cordero-Garcia and Pugin petitioned for review in the relevant Courts of Appeals. In Cordero-Garcia‘s case, the Ninth Circuit concluded, in pertinent part, that his state conviction for dissuading a witness from reporting a crime did not constitute an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” because the state offense did not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. 44 F. 4th 1181, 1188–1189 (2022). In Pugin‘s case, by contrast, the Fourth Circuit concluded that his state conviction for accessory after the fact constituted an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” even if the state offense did not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. 19 F. 4th 437, 450 (2021); see also Silva v. Garland, 27 F. 4th 95, 98 (CA1 2022).
This Court granted certiorari to resolve the conflict in the Courts of Appeals. 598 U. S. ____ (2023).
II
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, noncitizens convicted of an “aggravated felony” are removable from the United States.
In 1996, Congress passed and President Clinton signed legislation that expanded
This Court has generally used the “categorical approach” to determine whether a prior conviction qualifies as an “aggravated felony” under
The question in this case is whether an offense “relat[es] to obstruction of justice” under
To begin, dictionaries from the time of
Notably missing from those dictionary definitions is a requirement that an investigation or proceeding be pending. The dictionaries demonstrate that obstruction of justice includes offenses where an investigation or proceeding is pending, but is not limited to offenses where an investigation or proceeding is pending.
In accord with the dictionary definitions, Title 18 of the U. S. Code has long proscribed various obstruction offenses that do not require a pending investigation or proceeding. Entitled “Obstruction of Justice,” Chapter 73 of Title 18 houses many such offenses. For example, the federal witness tampering statute covers various offenses, such as killing or threatening a witness with an intent to prevent the
The Solicitor General explains that many state obstruction offenses as of 1996 similarly did not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. See, e.g.,
For obstruction offenses, the Model Penal Code also generally does not require that an investigation or
proceeding be pending. See generally ALI, Model Penal Code §240.0(4), p. 3 (1980) (“‘official proceeding[s]’ include those which ‘may be heard‘“). For witness tampering, for example, the Model Penal Code focuses on an actor‘s intent to tamper with a witness, not whether an investigation or proceeding is pending. See id., §241.6, Comment 2, at 166–167 (“What is important is not that the actor believe that an official proceeding or investigation will begin within a certain span of time but rather that he recognize that his conduct threatens obstruction of justice“).
That extensive body of authority—dictionaries, federal laws, state laws, and the Model Penal Code—reflects common sense. Individuals can obstruct the process of justice even when an investigation or proceeding is not pending. For example, a murderer may threaten to kill a witness if the witness reports information to the police. Such an act is no less obstructive merely because the government has yet to catch on and begin an investigation. As the Solicitor General persuasively states, one can obstruct the wheels of justice even before the wheels have begun to move;
Importantly, if an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” under
One final point bears emphasis: To the extent any doubt remains about whether
For all of those reasons, an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” under
III
Pugin and Cordero-Garcia offer four main arguments in response. None is persuasive.
First, Pugin and Cordero-Garcia point to
Second, Pugin and Cordero-Garcia cite a few authorities from the 1700s and 1800s and assert that obstruction of justice historically required that an investigation or proceeding be pending. But the historical record cited by Pugin and Cordero-Garcia does not back up their broad claim. See, e.g., 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 126 (1769) (explaining without qualification that endeavoring “to dissuade a witness from giving evidence” was an “impedimen[t] of justice“). More to the point, as we have explained at length, the widespread and contemporary understanding of obstruction of justice at the time Congress enacted
Third, Pugin and Cordero-Garcia argue that offenses “relating to obstruction of justice” require a pending investigation or proceeding; otherwise, they maintain that those offenses would be redundant with other offenses covered by
*
*
*
In sum, we conclude that an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” under
It is so ordered.
JACKSON, J., concurring
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 22-23 and 22-331
JEAN FRANCOIS PUGIN, PETITIONER
v.
MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL, PETITIONER
v.
FERNANDO CORDERO-GARCIA, AKA FERNANDO CORDERO
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[June 22, 2023]
JUSTICE JACKSON, concurring.
I agree with the Court that the Ninth Circuit wrongly embraced a pending-proceeding requirement when it assessed what types of prior offenses qualify as “offense[s] relating to obstruction of justice” under
I write separately to highlight one (possibly sufficient) reason why a predicate offense need not have a nexus to a pending or ongoing investigation or judicial proceeding in order to qualify as “an offense relating to obstruction of justice” within the meaning of this immigration statute. The reason is that, when Congress inserted the phrase “offense relating to obstruction of justice” into
*
*
*
What counts as “an offense relating to obstruction of justice” within the meaning of
When Congress selected the words “offense relating to obstruction of justice” and inserted them into the INA in 1996, 110 Stat. 1277–1278, Congress‘s longest standing and most significant use of the phrase “obstruction of justice” in the Statutes at Large was its description of Chapter 73 of Title 18 as concerning “obstruction of justice.” 62 Stat. 769; see also 104 Stat. 4861 (describing Chapter 73 as “relating to obstruction of justice” when adding an offense to that Chapter in 1990). To me, this is a powerful contextual clue that Congress may have simply—and solely—been drawing on its own existing understanding of which particular offenses are properly characterized as such. Accord, Flores v. Attorney General, 856 F. 3d 280, 287–289 (CA3 2017) (refusing to “look beyond Chapter 73” to “determine whether an alien‘s prior offense ‘relat[es] to obstruction of justice‘” because
I believe that hewing closely to Congress‘s will in this regard is especially important where (as here) making the determination of which offenses qualify implicates the “drastic” deportation sanction. Jordan v. De George, 341 U. S. 223, 231 (1951). In our constitutional system, the Legislature makes legal policy judgments regarding the particular circumstances that trigger the consequences that are associated with criminal convictions. Accord, United States v. Lanier, 520 U. S. 259, 265, and n. 5 (1997). And it seems at least plausible that Congress‘s description of certain “aggravated felon[ies],”
Here, the Court correctly emphasizes Chapter 73‘s importance in the course of analyzing whether a possible predicate offense must have a nexus to a pending proceeding in order to qualify as an aggravated felony. Ante, at 4. But these parties have not fully ventilated the arguments for and against the possibility that Chapter 73 might define (in substance) the universe of offenses that “relat[e] to obstruction of justice,”
*Before this Court, Pugin did not root his arguments in the Chapter 73-focused paradigm that I sketch here. I agree with the Court that the arguments he did make do not require reversing the Fourth Circuit.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 22-23 and 22-331
JEAN FRANCOIS PUGIN, PETITIONER
v.
MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL, PETITIONER
v.
FERNANDO CORDERO-GARCIA, AKA FERNANDO CORDERO
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[June 22, 2023]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GORSUCH joins, and with whom JUSTICE KAGAN joins as to all but Part III, dissenting.
From early American laws, to dictionaries, to modern federal and state obstruction statutes, interference with an ongoing investigation or proceeding is at the core of what it means to be “an offense relating to obstruction of justice,”
I
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines “aggravated felony” by enumerating a long list of offenses.
To assess whether someone‘s conviction is covered by a generic offense, our precedents dictate that courts use the “categorical approach.” Esquivel-Quintana, 581 U. S., at 389. That approach disregards facts about the conviction and instead “compare[s] the elements of the statute forming the basis of the defendant‘s conviction with the elements of the ‘generic’ crime—i.e., the offense as commonly understood.” Descamps v. United States, 570 U. S. 254, 257 (2013). If the elements of the underlying crime of conviction are narrower than or the same as the elements of the generic offense, then there is a “categorical match,” Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U. S. 184, 190 (2013), and the underlying offense is an aggravated felony. If there is no categorical match, then the conviction is not an aggravated felony, no matter the underlying facts.
Before a court can engage in this categorical comparison, however, it must discern the “basic elements” of the relevant “generic” offense. Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575, 599 (1990). Courts accomplish this task by looking for “evidence about the generic meaning” of the offense at the time of the statute‘s enactment. Esquivel-Quintana, 581 U. S., at 395. This means looking for the “generally accepted contemporary meaning” of the generic offense, while setting aside more unusual “nongeneric” variants that are “defin[ed] ... more broadly.” Taylor, 495 U. S., at 596, 599. In Taylor, for example, this Court concluded, after surveying various sources of meaning, that for purposes of
The question presented in these cases—whether “an offense relating to obstruction of justice,”
The Court loses sight of this fundamental point. Instead of focusing on whether a pending investigation or proceeding is part of the heartland of obstruction of justice, it wanders off into an array of obstruction-adjacent federal and state laws that do not require a pending investigation or proceeding. The Court then announces that those offenses are core obstruction of justice, even though the evidence it relies on, taken as a whole, reveals they are not. The result is predictable. By defining offenses that do not require a pending investigation or proceeding as core obstruction of justice, the majority forces through the conclusion that a pending investigation or proceeding is not required to qualify as generic obstruction of justice.
A reexamination of the sources relied upon by the majority, with the appropriate focus on discerning the trunk of obstruction of justice, rather than its various branches or offshoots, leads to the opposite result: To qualify as “an offense relating to obstruction of justice” under
A
As an initial matter, the majority glosses over the critical fact that “obstruction of justice” was an established term of art at the time of
From the “old soil” until today, “obstruction of justice” has required a pending investigation or proceeding. In 1831, Congress forbade efforts “to influence, intimidate, or impede any juror, witness, or officer, in any court of the United States, in the discharge of his duty” or “to obstruct or impede, the due administration of justice therein.” Act of Mar. 2, 1831, ch. 99, 4 Stat. 488 (emphasis added). This provision, which became §5399 of the Revised Statutes, see Rev. Stat., Title 70, ch. 4, §5399 (1875), laid “the foundation for the modern statutory incarnation of the offense of obstruction of justice.” E. Murphy, Manufacturing Crime: Process, Pretext,
In Pettibone v. United States, 148 U. S. 197 (1893), this Court confirmed that §5399 required a pending proceeding. After describing the law as criminalizing “obstruction of the due administration of justice in any court of the United
Sotomayor, J., dissenting
States.” the Court explained that “such obstruction can only arise when justice is being administered.” Id., at 207. “Unless that fact exists, the statutory offense cannot be committed.” Ibid. The Court thus tied obstruction of justice under §5399 to “the pendency of proceedings in the United States court, or the progress of the administration of justice therein.” Id., at 205.
Section 5399 is the predecessor of the modern omnibus or catchall obstruction of justice clause, which is codified at
Congress was aware of this settled interpretation of
In short, in searching for the heartland of obstruction of justice, the omnibus clause of
Even setting this crucial historical evidence aside, and proceeding as the Court does, by looking to dictionary definitions, chapter 73 of the Federal Criminal Code, state statutes, and the Model Penal Code, the same result emerges: Core obstruction of justice requires a pending investigation or proceeding.
1
Begin with the central dictionary definition upon which the Court relies. It defines obstruction of justice as “the crime or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice and law esp. by influencing, threatening, harming, or impeding a witness, potential witness, juror, or judicial or legal officer or by furnishing false information in or otherwise impeding an investigation or legal process.” Merriam-Webster‘s Dictionary of Law 337 (1996) (emphasis added).
While the Court claims that this definition omits any requirement of a pending investigation or proceeding, ante, at 4, the two italicized phrases say otherwise. “[I]nterference” means the “act of meddling in or hampering an activity or process,” Webster‘s Third New International Dictionary 1178 (1993), while “impede” means “to interfere with or get in the way of the progress of” something or someone, id., at 1132. The definition is clear that the process that is meddled in, or interfered with, is the “process of justice and law” or “an investigation or legal process.”6
For the same reason, the majority is too hasty when it asserts that the definition encompasses acts separate from a pending investigation or proceeding. That definition ends with the phrase “in . . . an investigation or legal process.” Under the series-qualifier canon, that phrase is best read to modify all listed verbs, especially because the definition lists each action as an example of “the crime or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice and law.” See Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 5) (“[W]hen there is a straightforward, parallel construction that involves all nouns or verbs in a series, a modifier at the end of the list normally applies to the entire series” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Thus, far from favoring the majority‘s view, the definition most naturally supports the conclusion that interference with a pending investigation or proceeding is an element of generic obstruction of justice.
2
The federal offenses listed in chapter 73 of
When Congress codified chapter 73 in 1948, the chapter contained six provisions, each of which requires a connection to a pending proceeding or investigation. See Act of June 25, 1948, §§1501-1506, 62 Stat. 769-770. The central provision is
By the time Congress passed
See
The primary outlier amongst the more recent additions to chapter 73 is
The Court instead reasons that because
3
The text of the INA itself confirms that Congress did not understand obstruction of justice to encompass all witness tampering. In the very same subsection of the INA at issue here, Congress expressly used the term “witness tampering” separately from “obstruction of justice.”
The Court‘s broad interpretation of “obstruction of justice,” which swallows up all witness tampering, cannot be reconciled with this statutory text. If, on the one hand, the Court applies the same broad meaning to “obstruction of justice” in
Although
Nor does it matter that
4
State law points to the same result as the other indicia of meaning examined thus far. State law is relevant because, in discerning the generic meaning of terms with common-law roots, the Court will often survey state statutes in effect at the time the federal statute in question was enacted. See Taylor, 495 U. S., at 598-599 (considering how “burglary” was understood “in the criminal codes of most States“). Here, when
The majority avoids this conclusion only by, once again, adopting a circular approach. In analyzing state law, the majority looks exclusively to state witness tampering statutes, which it simply assumes are “state obstruction offenses.” Ante, at 5. It then concludes that because many of those statutes do not require a pending investigation or proceeding, neither does obstruction of justice under the INA. Ibid. As should be clear by now, that method gets the categorical approach backward; if the overarching federal category is assumed to include the state offenses in question, there will always be a categorical match. One cannot prove that all state witness tampering laws fall within the INA‘s “relating to obstruction of justice” simply by assuming that they do.15
The majority also relies on the Model Penal Code (MPC). Ante, at 5-6. Although the MPC sometimes can provide supplemental evidence of generic meaning, see Taylor, 495 U. S., at 598, n. 8, it is critical to bear in mind that the
Despite these issues, the majority focuses, again without justification, on the MPC‘s description of witness tampering (§241.6). See ante, at 6. Even setting aside the now-familiar circularity of this reasoning, this definition does not help the majority either. In describing witness tampering, the MPC reformers chose to depart from “laws requiring that a proceeding or investigation actually be pending,” §241.6, Comment 2, at 166, by requiring only a “belie[f] that an official proceeding or investigation is pending or about to be instituted.” §241.6(1) (emphasis added). That intentional departure is reason alone to treat this MPC description with caution when articulating generic obstruction of justice. Yet, the majority goes much further than the MPC reformers by dismissing the notion that at least a foreseeable investigation or proceeding should be required. See ante, at 7, n. 2. That statement by the Court reflects just how far afield it has wandered from the heartland of obstruction of justice.
Perhaps sensing the weakness of its evidence, the Court falls back on the Government‘s “commonsense point,” Reply Brief 4, that “one can obstruct the wheels of justice even before the wheels have begun to move,” ante, at 6. Yet the intuitive idea that “obstruction can only arise when justice is being administered,” Pettibone, 148 U. S., at 207, finds support in common sense to at least the same degree. But while both formulations find some support in common sense, the same cannot be said regarding other clues about generic meaning. Considered together, the relevant history, dictionaries, and federal and state laws provide powerful evidence that obstruction of justice “as commonly understood,” Descamps, 570 U. S., at 257, when Congress enacted
II
In a feeble attempt to shore up its argument, the Court resorts to a seemingly limitless construction of “relating to obstruction of justice,”
The text of the INA “makes [non-U. S. citizens] removable based on the nature of their convictions, not based on their actual conduct.” Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions, 581 U. S. 385, 389 (2017). This explains why, when applying
In contrast, no such problem arises if “an offense relating to . . . perjury” or “an offense relating to obstruction of justice” is understood narrowly to mean simply “an offense qualifying as generic perjury” or “an offense qualifying as generic obstruction of justice.” The broader statutory context confirms this reading. Again and again,
The Court‘s seemingly expansive reading of “in relation to” is also refuted by its consequences for the statutory text. If all that is required is a “connection with” something that “obstruct[s] the wheels of justice,” ante, at 6-7, then the Government has open season to argue that all sorts of crimes that hinder law enforcement (e.g., failing to report a crime) or make detection of a crime more difficult (e.g., money laundering) qualify as offenses “relating to obstruction of justice.” On this approach, certain other aggravated felonies listed in the INA (e.g.,
More importantly, an expansive reading of “in relation to” opens the door for the Government to argue that many low-level offenses that fall outside of core obstruction of justice are “aggravated” felonies, even though the INA reserves that label for “especially egregious felonies.” Esquivel-Quintana, 581 U. S., at 394. For example, misdemeanor convictions for failing to report a crime, presenting false identification to an officer, refusing to aid a police officer, leaving the scene of a crime, or purchasing a fake ID could be taken to count as “relating to obstruction of justice.” See Brief for National
This significant potential for “redundancy,” “unfairness,” and “arbitrary” enforcement should have led the Court to “exercise interpretive restraint,” Marinello v. United States, 584 U. S. 1, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 7, 9) (internal quotation marks omitted), when construing “relating to.” Indeed, the many problems with an expansive reading of “relating to” raise the question whether the Court even really intends to adopt such a reading, especially because the relevant discussion occupies a single paragraph. Perhaps instead the Court simply offers up “connection with” as a synonym for “relating to,” leaving it for lower courts to settle what that phrase actually means.
III
While the evidence assembled here is far stronger than any offered by the majority, the sheer complexity of the task at hand leaves lingering ambiguity, even if the Court claims it does not see it. Cf. ante, at 10. To the extent doubts remain, however, they are resolved in favor of a narrower understanding of
This Court resolves doubts in favor of the non-U. S. citizen in keeping with the general rule that ambiguities in penal statutes should be construed against the government. After all, deportation is not only a kind of “penalty,” but a “drastic measure” often “the equivalent of banishment [or] exile.” Fong Haw Tan v. Phelan, 333 U. S. 6, 10 (1948). Nowhere is that truer than here. Aggravated felonies under the INA are “a category of crimes singled out for the harshest deportation consequences.” Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 560 U. S. 563, 566 (2010). If a non-U. S. citizen is convicted of an aggravated felony, even if she has a green card and has lived in this country for years, she is subject to removal and is also ineligible for readmission and many forms of immigration relief. See
This Court has been clear that, in the face of such stakes, it “will not assume that Congress meant to trench on [a non-U. S. citizen‘s] freedom beyond that which is
IV
By rejecting a central feature of core obstruction of justice and adopting a seemingly expansive reading of “relating to,” the Court leaves generic obstruction of justice without any discernible shape. The Court thus injects further chaos into the already fraught question of how to understand
The Court could perhaps have reined in some of that chaos by giving “obstruction of justice” affirmative shape and boundaries in other ways, but it makes no effort to do so. Instead, the Court simply rejects the legal proposition that a pending investigation or proceeding is required for a predicate offense to qualify under
The flaw in this syllogism is, of course, premise (1). By assuming, up front and without reason, that dissuading a witness from reporting a crime qualifies as obstruction of justice, the Court oversteps. Congress could, if it wanted, add witness tampering to the INA‘s lengthy list of aggravated felonies, just as it did with the list of offenses at
The syllogism‘s conclusion is also noteworthy for its narrowness. In the end, all the Court really holds is that generic obstruction of justice includes one offense (dissuading a witness from reporting a crime) that does not require a pending investigation or proceeding. Lower courts faced with difficult questions about what offenses qualify as categorical matches for
* * *
By eliminating a central constraint on what qualifies as “an offense relating to obstruction of justice” under
would leave it to Congress, not the Judiciary, to decide which additional crimes should be listed as aggravated felonies under the INA. I respectfully dissent.