What Yates Tells Us About High Court's View Of Criminal Law

Law360, New York (March 20, 2015, 2:39 PM EDT) -- The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision on the scope of a criminal anti-shredding law in Yates v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1074 (2014), caught headlines in legal and mainstream publications for its unusual fact pattern. In short, a fisherman was accused of destroying fish that he had caught and stored that fell below the minimum length allowed. The odd twist in this story is that he was convicted under a law that was enacted in the face of widespread financial misconduct and often only applies to the destruction of information recording instances of corporate crime. The justices ultimately gave the financial fraud law a narrow reading, but only in a split decision where no opinion garnered more than four votes....

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