Yates v. United States: Floundering About in the Choppy Waters of Statutory Interpretation

Lindsay DeFrancesco

In Yates v. United States, the United States Supreme Court analyzed 18 U.S.C. § 15192 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which prohibits persons from “destroy[ing] . . . record[s], document[s], or tangible object[s] with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence” a federal investigation. Specifically, the Court examined the term “tangible object,” as used in Section 1519, in order to determine its meaning and resolve ambiguity. The Yates Court considered two possible interpretations of “tangible object”: (1) a narrow interpretation, where “tangible object” refers only to objects that can be “used to record or preserve information,” or (2) a broad interpretation, where “tangible object” refers to any physical object. The Court held that the narrow interpretation was correct, and therefore concluded that “tangible object” denoted only objects that can “record or preserve information.” The Court’s judgment was correct due to its accurate interpretation of legislative history and congressional intent, and its use of the canons of construction, noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis. The Court erred, however, when it inappropriately discussed the rule of lenity to expound upon policy concerns related to over-criminalization, and it mistakenly applied the canon against surplusage to Section 1512(c)(1) instead of Section 2232(a).7 Nevertheless, the Court’s reasoning did imply that Section 1519 is only applicable in financial fraud cases. This inference may provide lower courts with instructive guidelines so as to prevent erroneous application of Section 1519 in the future to non-financial fraud cases.