Hugh commented "This overly broad reach by the Federal government is a little scary."

The argument in the Supreme Court proceeding initially focussed on the defendant's claim that "the statute was intended to bar only the destruction of documents and records, not of fish. The federal government counters that the law was passed as a general obstruction of justice statute and bars not just document destruction, but the destruction of any 'tangible object' in 'any' federal investigation." (from the posted NPR article).

As I understand the NPR article, the Justices then got into several discussions regarding the constitutionality of the statute itself, whether its enforcement could be "arbitrary and discriminatory", and the possible distinction between "documents and records" and "evidence" (in this case, fish).

This is by no measure an "overly broad reach", since there is no question he destroyed the evidence. There was never any request by the Federal government to sentence him to 20 years' imprisonment. The prosecution, following the sentencing guidelines in the U.S. Attorneys' manual, requested a sentence of between 21 to 27 months. The judge ended up giving 30 days, which the prosecution did not appeal.

You also commented "... where is the government when some of these large records centers are burned down? The fact that these fires are sometimes determined to be arson would indicate there was a vested interest in making certain records disappear. These are the items the SOX laws were meant to protect. Seems to show the government picks and chooses who they want to punish."

SOX (and similar laws) would apply to the OWNER of the records, not to the owner/operator of the storage facility, so, if the federal government determined that records covered by SOX et al had been destroyed to evade corporate responsibility (and the government would have to prove that), then the Feds would go after the records owner.

Best regards,

Fred
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Frederic J. Grevin
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