Pugin v. Garland/Opinion of the Court
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 22–23 and 22–331
JEAN FRANCOIS PUGIN, PETITIONER
22–23v.22–23
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
22–331v.22–331
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 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.” 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(43)(S). The question here is whether an offense “relat[es] to obstruction of justice” under §1101(a)(43)(S) even if the offense does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. That question arises because some obstruction offenses can occur when an investigation or proceeding is not pending, such as threatening a witness to prevent the witness from reporting a crime to the police. We conclude that an offense may “relat[e] to obstruction of justice” under §1101(a)(43)(S) even if the offense does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending.
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 8 U. S. C. §§1101(a)(43)(S), 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). In both cases, an Immigration Judge ruled for the Department, as did the Board of Immigration Appeals.
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. 8 U. S. C. §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). The Act defines “aggravated felony” to cover a broad range of federal and state crimes. See §1101(a)(43).
In 1996, Congress passed and President Clinton signed legislation that expanded the definition of “aggravated felony” to include offenses “relating to obstruction of justice, perjury or subornation of perjury, or bribery of a witness, for which the term of imprisonment is at least one year.” §1101(a)(43)(S); 110 Stat. 1278; id., at 3009–628.
This Court has generally used the “categorical approach” to determine whether a prior conviction qualifies as an “aggravated felony” under §1101(a)(43). Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions, 581 U. S. 385, 389 (2017); Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U. S. 184, 190 (2013). Under that approach, courts look to “the elements of the statute of conviction, not to the facts of each defendant’s conduct.” Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575, 601 (1990). The Court’s role here is not to fashion a separate federal obstruction offense, but rather to determine which federal or state offenses “relat[e] to obstruction of justice.”
The question in this case is whether an offense “relat[es] to obstruction of justice” under §1101(a)(43)(S) even if the offense does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. Dictionary definitions, federal laws, state laws, and the Model Penal Code show that the answer is yes: An offense “relat[es] to obstruction of justice” even if the offense does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending.
To begin, dictionaries from the time of §1101(a)(43)(S)’s enactment in 1996 demonstrate that obstruction of justice generally does not require a pending investigation or proceeding. To take an illustrative formulation, obstruction of justice covers “the crime or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice and law,” including “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). The offense “captures every willful act of corruption, intimidation, or force that tends somehow to impair the machinery of the civil or criminal law.” B. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 611 (2d ed. 1995); see also Black’s Law Dictionary 1077 (6th ed. 1990) (“obstructing the administration of justice in any way”); cf. Esquivel-Quintana, 581 U. S., at 391–392 (relying on same dictionaries to interpret a different offense in §1101(a)(43)).
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 person from testifying at an official proceeding. See 18 U. S. C. §§1512(a)(1)(A), (b)(1). That statute provides that “an official proceeding need not be pending or about to be instituted at the time of the offense.” §1512(f)(1). Likewise, §1519 forbids assorted means of destroying, altering, or falsifying records with an intent to obstruct certain investigations or proceedings. That provision covers acts intended to impede a federal investigation or proceeding, “including one not even on the verge of commencement.” Yates v. United States, 574 U. S. 528, 547 (2015) (plurality opinion); see also 18 U. S. C. §1518 (proscribing acts to obstruct the communication of certain information to criminal investigators).[1]
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., Fla. Stat. §914.22(3)(a) (1997); N. D. Cent. Code Ann. §12.1–09–01(3)(c) (1997); State v. O’Neill, 165 Vt. 270, 682 A. 2d 943 (1996); Brief for Attorney General 36–43 (collecting statutes); see also Commonwealth v. Berry, 141 Ky. 477, 481, 133 S. W. 212, 213 (1911); cf. Esquivel-Quintana, 581 U. S., at 395–397 (looking to state statutes). Some States did not label the relevant offenses as “obstruction of justice,” but instead labeled the offenses with a more precise term for the particular category of obstruction at issue, such as witness tampering. But Congress accounted for the variations in labels by crafting the relevant definition in §1101(a)(43)(S) to cover offenses “relating to obstruction of justice,” not just offenses labeled as “obstruction of justice.” In any event, the terminology that States use to categorize criminal offenses is not dispositive because our inquiry here does not turn on “technical definitions and labels under state law.” Taylor, 495 U. S., at 590.
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; indeed, obstruction of justice is often “most effective” when it prevents “an investigation or proceeding from commencing in the first place.” Brief for Attorney General 15.
Importantly, if an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” under §1101(a)(43)(S) required that an investigation or proceeding be pending, then many common obstruction offenses would not qualify as aggravated felonies under that provision. We decline to interpret §1101(a)(43)(S) to exclude numerous heartland obstruction offenses. “We should not lightly conclude that Congress enacted a self-defeating statute.” Quarles v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 8); see also, e.g., Stokeling v. United States, 586 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 7–8); Esquivel-Quintana, 581 U. S., at 395; Voisine v. United States, 579 U. S. 686, 695–696 (2016).
One final point bears emphasis: To the extent any doubt remains about whether §1101(a)(43)(S) requires that an investigation or proceeding be pending, the phrase “relating to obstruction of justice” resolves the doubt. Cf. Mellouli v. Lynch, 575 U. S. 798, 811–812, n. 11 (2015). The phrase “relating to” ensures that this statute covers offenses that have “a connection with” obstruction of justice—which surely covers common obstruction offenses that can occur when an investigation or proceeding is not pending. Coventry Health Care of Mo., Inc. v. Nevils, 581 U. S. 87, 96 (2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). By contrast, in defining certain other aggravated felonies in this statute, Congress did not employ the broad phrase “relating to.” See, e.g., 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(43)(A) (“murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a minor”).
For all of those reasons, an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” under §1101(a)(43)(S) does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending.[2]
III
Pugin and Cordero-Garcia offer four main arguments in response. None is persuasive.
First, Pugin and Cordero-Garcia point to 18 U. S. C. §1503(a), which among other things prohibits persons from endeavoring “to influence, obstruct, or impede” the “due administration of justice.” According to Pugin and Cordero-Garcia, that specific prohibition requires that an investigation or proceeding be pending. Cf. Pettibone v. United States, 148 U. S. 197, 207 (1893). But even if they are correct about that point, §1503(a) is only one obstruction offense among the many obstruction offenses in Title 18. And many federal obstruction offenses—like many state obstruction offenses—proscribe obstruction when an investigation or proceeding is not pending. Moreover, if Congress wanted to define offenses “relating to obstruction of justice” to have the same coverage as §1503(a), Congress knew how to do so: Congress could have cross-referenced §1503(a) in §1101(a)(43)(S) in the same way that Congress cross-referenced numerous other statutes in §1101(a)(43). See, e.g., §§1101(a)(43)(B)–(F). But Congress included no such cross-reference to §1503(a) in §1101(a)(43)(S).
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 §1101(a)(43)(S) in 1996 did not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. Cf. Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575, 593 (1990).
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 §1101(a)(43)(S)—in particular, offenses “relating to … perjury or subornation of perjury, or bribery of a witness.” But Pugin and Cordero-Garcia fail to explain how requiring a pending investigation or proceeding for obstruction offenses would resolve the claimed redundancies with perjury or bribery offenses. After all, perjury and bribery offenses often “relat[e] to obstruction of justice.” In any event, “redundancies are common in statutory drafting—sometimes in a congressional effort to be doubly sure, sometimes because of congressional inadvertence or lack of foresight, or sometimes simply because of the shortcomings of human communication.” Barton v. Barr, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 16). As a result, “the better overall reading of the statute” sometimes “contains some redundancy.” Ibid.; Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian, 590 U. S. ___, ___, n. 5 (2020) (slip op., at 10, n. 5); Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc., 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 11). Section 1101(a)(43) illustrates the point: Congress listed a large number of offenses that would qualify as aggravated felonies, likely to avoid unintended gaps. So it is not surprising to find some overlap. To take one example, the definition of “aggravated felony” covers “murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a minor” and separately covers “crime[s] of violence.” §§1101(a)(43)(A), (F).[3]
Fourth, Pugin and Cordero-Garcia invoke the rule of lenity. But even assuming that the rule of lenity can be invoked in this particular civil immigration context, the rule applies only if “after seizing everything from which aid can be derived,” there remains “grievous ambiguity.” Ocasio v. United States, 578 U. S. 282, 295, n. 8 (2016) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, applying the traditional tools of statutory interpretation, we have concluded that an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. So we have no basis for resorting to the rule of lenity. See, e.g., Shaw v. United States, 580 U. S. 63, 71 (2016); Salman v. United States, 580 U. S. 39, 51 (2016); Abramski v. United States, 573 U. S. 169, 188, n. 10 (2014); cf. Kawashima v. Holder, 565 U. S. 478, 489 (2012). *** In sum, we conclude that an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” under §1101(a)(43)(S) does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. We therefore disagree with the argument raised by Pugin and Cordero-Garcia for excluding their obstruction offenses from the broad coverage of §1101(a)(43)(S). We affirm the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. We reverse the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
- ↑ To be sure, one of those offenses—18 U. S. C. §1519—was enacted after the passage of §1101(a)(43)(S) in its current form in 1996. But §1519, too, reflects the longstanding ordinary understanding of obstruction of justice—and no one here suggests that the ordinary understanding in the years after 1996 somehow differed from the ordinary understanding in 1996. See Branch v. Smith, 538 U. S. 254, 281 (2003) (plurality opinion of Scalia, J.) (“the most rudimentary rule of statutory construction” is “that courts do not interpret statutes in isolation, but in the context of the corpus juris of which they are a part, including later-enacted statutes”).
- ↑ As interpreted by this Court, a few obstruction statutes require that an investigation or proceeding be reasonably foreseeable. See, e.g., Marinello v. United States, 584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 11). Those decisions interpreted specific statutory language and did not rule that obstruction offenses in general have a foreseeability requirement (which would have been incorrect, in any event). Moreover, the Solicitor General explains that offenses “relating to obstruction of justice” require an intent to interfere with the legal process. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 6–8, 18, 116–117; Brief for Attorney General 23. That mens rea requirement targets the same basic overbreadth concern as a foreseeability requirement and ensures that §1101(a)(43)(S) will not sweep in offenses that are not properly understood as offenses “relating to obstruction of justice.” For example, the Solicitor General concedes that federal misprision of felony is not an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” because, in the Government’s view, the crime does not require an intent to interfere with the legal process. See 18 U. S. C. §4; Reply Brief for Attorney General 26–27. In short, we see no justification for engrafting a separate foreseeability requirement onto the broad and general language of §1101(a)(43)(S).
- ↑ The same point applies to §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii), which lists both “obstruction of justice” and “witness tampering.” Neither Pugin nor Cordero-Garcia cites that provision—presumably because the provision appears in a different part of the statute and contains different language. Moreover, Congress took the same belt-and-suspenders approach in §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii) that it did in §1101(a)(43). See §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii) (covering among other things “being held hostage; peonage; involuntary servitude; slave trade; kidnapping; abduction; unlawful criminal restraint; false imprisonment” as well as “any similar activity in violation of Federal, State, or local criminal law”).