authority justification. Prosecutions where such a “public authority” justification is invoked are understandably rare, see American Law Institute Model Penal Code and Commentaries § 3.03 Comment 1, at 23–24 (1985); cf. Visa Fraud Investigations, 8 Op. O.L.C. 284, 285 n.2, 286 (1984), and thus there is little case law in which courts have analyzed the scope of the justification with respect to the conduct of government officials. Nonetheless, discussions in the leading treatises and in the Model Penal Code demonstrate its legitimacy. See 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law § 10.2(b), at 135 (2d ed. 2003); Perkins & Boyce, Criminal Law at 1093 (“Deeds which otherwise would be criminal, such as taking or destroying property, taking hold of a person by force and against his will, placing him in confinement, or even taking his life, are not crimes if done with proper public authority.”); see also Model Penal Code § 3.03(1)(a), (d), (e), at 22–23 (proposing codification of justification where conduct is “required or authorized by,” inter alia, “the law defining the duties or functions of a public officer,” “the law governing the armed services or the lawful conduct of war,” or “any provision of law imposing a public duty”); National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, A Proposed New Federal Criminal Code § 602(1) (1971) (“Conduct engaged in by a public servant in the course of his official duties is justified when it is required or authorized by law.”). And the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) has invoked analogous rationales when it has analyzed whether Congress intended a particular criminal statute to prohibit specific conduct that otherwise falls within a government agency’s authorities. See, e.g., Visa Fraud Investigation, 8 Op. O.L.C. at 287–88 (concluding that a civil statute prohibiting issuance of visa to an alien known to be ineligible did not prohibit State Department from issuing such a visa where “necessary” to facilitate an important Immigration and Naturalization Service undercover operation carried out in a “reasonable” fashion).
The public authority justification would not excuse all conduct of public officials from all criminal prohibitions. The legislature may design some criminal prohibitions to place bounds on the kinds of governmental conduct that can be authorized by the Executive. Or the legislature may enact a criminal prohibition in order to limit the scope of the conduct that the legislature has otherwise authorized the Executive to undertake pursuant to another statute. See, e.g., Nardone v. United States, 302 U.S. 379, 384 (1937) (federal statute proscribed government wiretapping). But the generally recognized public authority justification reflects that it would not make sense to attribute to Congress the intent to criminalize all covered activities undertaken by public officials in the legitimate exercise of their otherwise lawful authorities, even if Congress clearly intends to make those same actions a crime when committed by persons not acting pursuant to public authority. In some instances, therefore, the best interpretation of a criminal prohibition is that Congress intended to distinguish persons who are acting pursuant to public authority from those who are not, even if the statute does not make that distinction express. Cf. id. at 384 (federal criminal statutes should be construed to excluded authorized conduct of public officers where such a reading “would work obvious absurdity as, for example, the
12
