Judge Gorsuch, White Collar Crime, and the Legacy of Justice Scalia

The confirmation battle over Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s pick to fill the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, promises to be ugly. All aspects of his record will be thoroughly dissected -- and likely distorted -- by both political parties. Looming over the proceeding is Democratic anger over the Merrick Garland nomination and the threat of Republican Senators to invoke the “nuclear option” to break any Democratic filibuster. It’s destined to be one of those political knife fights that reminds everyone why they hate Washington. Partisans on both sides will be trying to predict how a Justice Gorsuch might rule on any number of hot-button issues. But here at Sidebars we are particularly interested in how Gorsuch's presence on the Supreme Court might influence the law of white collar crime. So I spent some time this week reading opinions written by Judge Gorsuch on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in cases involving white collar offenses such as mail and wire fraud, public corruption, obstruction of justice and money laundering, to see if I could glean anything from those decisions. I didn’t find anything particularly remarkable. Most of the white collar cases where Judge Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a three-judge panel ruled in favor of the government, but that’s true of most criminal appeals. Most of the decisions were unanimous. That’s also not unusual, but at least it suggests a judge who generally colors within the lines of established precedent and is not a bomb-thrower writing dissents advocating extreme positions. One thing I definitely learned is that Judge Gorsuch is indeed a terrific writer, as many others have noted. His opinions are clear, concise, and free of legal jargon. They are a pleasure to read, which is saying something when it comes to judicial opinions. In that regard he reminds me of Justice Kagan, in my view currently the best writer on the Court. That’s something I really admire -- although I guess if you fear a Justice Gorsuch is going to gut your fundamental liberties it’s cold comfort to know he’ll do it with great style and clarity. In any event, it appears unlikely that any of Judge Gorsuch’s opinions in white collar cases will be particularly controversial or a focus of his confirmation hearing. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can learn about how Justice Gorsuch might approach such cases at the high court. Those who have studied or worked with Judge Gorsuch and know him best describe him as a judge in the mold of Antonin Scalia, the Justice whose seat he would assume. The opinions and other materials I reviewed certainly support that characterization. And if Justice Gorsuch does follow in the footsteps of Justice Scalia when it comes to criminal law, it could lead to some interesting and potentially surprising results.

Justice Scalia’s White Collar Legacy

When it comes to Justice Scalia and criminal law, it’s complicated. Although conservative, he was definitely not a "hanging judge" ruling against criminal defendants at every opportunity. On the contrary, Scalia’s strict approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation often resulted in decisions that favored criminal defendants – and often led him to side with some of the most liberal members of the Court. In constitutional law, Justice Scalia’s originalist approach made him suspicious of expansive notions of government power and protective of the rights of criminal defendants embodied in the text of the Constitution. In areas such as the right of defendants to confront witnesses against them (for example, Crawford v. Washington), the right to a jury trial (Blakely v. Washington), and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures (Florida v. Jardines and Kyllo v. United States, for example), Scalia was a powerful voice warning against government encroachment on these fundamental constitutional liberties. On the other hand, when it came to doctrines he considered judicial inventions not found in the text of the Constitution – such as the exclusionary rule and right to Miranda warnings – he was much less sympathetic. White collar cases more often involve the interpretation of statutes, not the Constitution. And white collar statutes are notorious for being broad and somewhat vague, using sometimes fuzzy terms such as “fraud” that are not otherwise defined. Justice Scalia authored a number of significant white collar opinions and dissents. His strict textualist approach generally led him to read white collar statutes narrowly. He was skeptical of prosecutors’ attempts to fashion expansive theories of criminal liability not directly spelled out in the statutes. Some Justices are much more willing to hold that courts should flesh out the parameters of broadly-worded criminal laws; Scalia insisted that crimes had to be specifically defined by Congress, not by judges. For example, Justice Scalia was a long-time critic of a popular species of mail and wire fraud known as honest services fraud. Frequently used in prosecution of state and local corruption, it charges that victims were defrauded not of money or property but of their intangible right to the honest services of a politician or other individual who owed them a duty. Justice Scalia maintained throughout his career that the idea of “honest services” was too amorphous to support criminal liability and failed to provide adequate notice about what conduct was prohibited. In Skilling v. United States in 2010 the Court responded to vagueness concerns by narrowing honest services fraud liability to cases involving bribes and kickbacks. Justice Scalia wrote a separate opinion arguing that the Court should go further and declare the honest services fraud statute unconstitutionally vague in all circumstances. (He even referred to it as “so-called honest services fraud,” a locution that President Trump might appreciate.) In another leading mail fraud case, Schmuck v. United States (yes, that's the real name), the issue was whether the mailings proved by the prosecution actually furthered the scheme to defraud as required by the statute. The majority adopted a broad reading of the “in furtherance” requirement and upheld the convictions. Justice Scalia dissented, criticizing the prosecution for what he deemed an overly-expansive view of the mail fraud statute. His opinion arguing that the defendant’s convictions should be reversed was joined by Justices Brennan and Marshall, two of the most liberal Justices of the 20th century. Justice Scalia similarly favored a narrow reading of a public corruption theory called extortion under color of official right under the Hobbs Act. In 1992 in Evans v. United States, the majority held that extortion under color of official right was basically equivalent to bribery. Justice Scalia joined a dissent by Justice Thomas arguing that bribery and extortion are distinct crimes and that the majority opinion wrongfully resulted in a vast expansion of federal criminal law and the power of federal prosecutors. Of course, strict interpretation of the statute sometimes meant the defendant lost. For example, Brogan v. United States involved the false statements statute that criminalizes lying to the government about material matters. Lower courts had created an exception to the statute, known as the “exculpatory no,” holding that prosecution could not be based on a defendant’s mere denial of guilt. Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion holding the text of the statute contains no such exception and stating “[c]ourts may not create their own limitations on legislation, no matter how alluring the policy arguments for doing so . . . .” (He also noted the defendant’s concession that “under a ‘literal reading’ of the statute he loses.” If you had made that concession and then saw that Justice Scalia was writing the opinion in your case, you knew it was not going to be a good day.) Recently in Yates v. United States the defendant was charged with obstruction of justice, a twenty-year felony, for throwing overboard some undersized fish that were evidence he had violated fishing regulations. During oral argument Justice Scalia expressed outrage that the government had brought such a case. But in the end he refused to join the five-Justice majority reversing the conviction on the questionable ground that fish were not “tangible objects” within the meaning of the law. Instead he joined with Justice Kagan in dissent, arguing that the plain wording of the statute compelled a ruling in favor of the government. He clearly thought the prosecution was misguided, but did not believe the solution was for the Court to adopt a strained interpretation of the statute that was contrary to its plain language.

Judge Gorsuch and White Collar Crime

Would Justice Gorsuch channel Justice Scalia when it comes to white collar crime? It’s always a bit dicey trying to predict how a judge would behave on the Supreme Court based on his appellate opinions. Appellate judges, of course, are bound by Supreme Court precedent, so they generally don’t have the same freedom and opportunities to decide novel legal questions. But there is reason to believe Justice Gorsuch’s approach would indeed look a lot like Justice Scalia’s. Judge Gorsuch shares Justice Scalia's belief in strict construction of the Constitution according to the intent of its framers. In a widely-quoted concurrence in Cordova v. City of Albuquerque, he wrote:

Ours is the job of interpreting the Constitution. And that document isn’t some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams . . .  but a carefully drafted text judges are charged with applying according to its original public meaning.

Judge Gorsuch also appears to share the concerns of Justice Scalia about overcriminalization and sweeping criminal statutes that may place too much power in the hands of prosecutors. In a law review article in 2010 Judge Gorsuch wrote: “What happens to individual freedom and equality—and to our very conception of law itself—when the criminal code comes to cover so many facets of daily life that prosecutors can almost choose their targets with impunity?” Judge Gorsuch’s strict textualist approach to statutory interpretation has occasionally led him, as it did Justice Scalia, to rulings that narrowly interpret criminal statutes and favor criminal defendants. One example involves a statute that makes it a crime for an individual with a felony conviction to possess a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The 10th Circuit has agreed with the majority of courts of appeal that the government in such a case needs to prove only that the defendant knew he possessed a gun and does not need to prove the defendant knew he had a felony conviction. Judge Gorsuch disagrees. In a classic Scalia-esque statutory interpretation argument, he has argued that the plain language of the statute requires the government to prove both – an interpretation that, if adopted, would favor defendants and place a heavier burden on the government. In one of the cases, United States v. Games-Perez, notice Judge Gorsuch’s language in his concurrence expressing disagreement with his colleagues:

Our duty to follow precedent sometimes requires us to make mistakes. Unfortunately, this is that sort of case. . . .

I recognize that precedent compels me to join the court's judgment. But candor also compels me to suggest that we might be better off applying the law Congress wrote than the one [the court’s earlier decision] hypothesized. It is a perfectly clear law as it is written, plain in its terms, straightforward in its application. Of course, if Congress wishes to revise the plain terms of [the statute] it is free to do so anytime. But there is simply no right or reason for this court to be in that business.

Those final two sentences could have been lifted straight out of a Justice Scalia opinion: the statute says what it says, and if there’s a problem it is up to Congress to fix it, not the court. But what a marked contrast to the writing style of Justice Scalia, who was famous for disagreeing with his colleagues in the most sarcastic and acerbic terms. In addition to being a gifted writer, Judge Gorsuch displays much more of a traditional judicial temperament than the man he would replace. Later, dissenting from a denial of a rehearing en banc in the same case, Judge Gorsuch wrote a impassioned defense of the right of criminal defendants to be convicted only if the government proves every element of the offense: "There can be few graver injustices in a society governed by the rule of law than imprisoning a man without requiring proof of his guilt under the written laws of the land." Another 10th Circuit case, United States v. Makkar, involved a prosecution under the analogous drug act, which criminalizes selling substances that mimic a listed controlled substance. In another pro-defendant decision, Judge Gorsuch reversed the convictions and held that the plain language of the statute requires the government to prove the analogous substance had the same chemical structure as the controlled substance, not merely that it had the same effects on the user. In addition to strictly interpreting criminal statutes, Judge Gorsuch, like Justice Scalia, has a history of holding prosecutors’ feet to the fire and insisting they play by the rules. For example, in United States v. Farr, a tax fraud case, Judge Gorsuch ruled in favor of the defendant and held that prosecutors had improperly convicted him under a theory of tax fraud different from the one that was charged in the indictment. In a case that might be of interest in the current political environment, Judge Gorsuch also wrote the opinion in United States v. Hasan, reversing the perjury conviction of a Somali refugee. He ruled the trial court had erred by finding the defendant was not entitled to an interpreter when testifying in the grand jury. This was under the extremely deferential “plain error” standard of review, and it would have been easy for an appellate judge simply to defer to the judgment of the trial court. If opponents try to portray Judge Gorsuch as a cold-hearted conservative who cares nothing about the most vulnerable among us, we might see this opinion trotted out in response. Overall, Judge Gorsuch’s opinions related to criminal law are largely uncontroversial and closely adhere to governing precedent. He definitely takes a strict approach to the interpretation of texts. He does not appear to be results-oriented and will not hesitate to rule against the government and in favor of a criminal defendant if he believes that is required. His approach to criminal law in general and white collar crime in particular does seem to be very similar to Justice Scalia’s. At least as far as criminal law is concerned, Democrats thinking about opposing his nomination should probably consider they could do a lot worse. Click here to join the Sidebars mailing list and receive e-mail notification of future posts.