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Fair Warning and the Retroactive Judicial Expansion of Federal Criminal Statutes

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Fair Warning and the Retroactive Judicial Expansion of Federal Criminal Statutes FAIR WARNING AND THE RETROACTIVE JUDICIAL EXPANSION OF FEDERAL CRIMINAL STATUTES TREVOR W. MORRISON* The “fair warning requirement” implicit in the Due Process Clause1 demands that criminal statutes provide “fair warning . in language that the common world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed.”2 As the Supreme Court has explained, this require- ment has three “manifestations.”3 The first two—the void-for-vagueness doctrine and the rule of lenity—guide courts in the interpretation of criminal statutes.4 The third is somewhat different. It is the rule that a court may not apply a “novel construction of a criminal statute to conduct that neither the statute nor any prior judicial decision has fairly disclosed to * Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, United States Department of Justice. B.A. 1994, University of British Columbia; J.D. 1998, Columbia Law School. I began thinking about many of the issues addressed in this Article while serving as a law clerk to Judge Betty Binns Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I thank Judge Fletcher for a rewarding year in her chambers. For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I thank Michael Dorf, Beth Katzoff, Henry Monaghan, Monica Stamm, Deirdre von Dornum, Fred von Lohmann, and Joshua Waldman. Thanks also to Ryan Hedges, Nicole Herron Kolhoff, and the members of the Southern California Law Review for efficient and patient editing. The views expressed in this Article do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice. 1. U.S. CONST. amends. V (“No person shall be . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”), XIV, § 1 (“No State shall . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”). See United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 265 (1997) (describing the fair warning requirement as an “application of [the Due Process Clause’s] spacious protection of liberty”). 2.Lanier, 520 U.S. at 265 (quoting McBoyle v. United States, 283 U.S. 25, 27 (1931)). 3.Id. at 266. 4. The void-for-vagueness doctrine requires the invalidation of statutes containing language “so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application.” Id. (quoting Connally v. Gen. Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926)). The rule of lenity “ensures fair warning by so resolving ambiguity in a criminal statute as to apply it only to conduct clearly covered.” Id. 455 456 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 74:455 be within its scope.”5 Unlike the others, this rule does not speak to how a court should interpret criminal statutes. Rather, it provides that once a court decides to interpret a statute so as to render the defendant’s conduct criminal, it may not apply that interpretation retroactively unless “the statute, either standing alone or as construed, made it reasonably clear at the relevant time that the defendant’s conduct was criminal.”6 The rule is thus simply stated in theory, but in practice it has been considerably less clear. Suppose, for example, that a United States Attorney charges an individual with violating a federal criminal statute. The defendant moves to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that settled precedent from the federal court of appeals in that part of the country interprets the statute not to reach his conduct. The district court grants the motion, and, in line with its prior decisions, the court of appeals affirms. The government petitions the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, noting that while the circuit in which the defendant was indicted interprets the statute in his favor, other circuits around the country interpret it differently. Under those circuits’ more expansive interpretations, the defendant’s conduct does violate the statute. The Supreme Court agrees to hear the case in order to resolve this split among the circuits, and a majority of the Court concludes that the more expansive reading of the statute is correct. May the Court apply that interpretation to the defendant in the instant case and authorize his prosecution, despite the fact that the law of his circuit held his conduct to be lawful at the time it was undertaken? Alternatively, if the prospect of a prosecution in the face of contrary circuit precedent seems too remote, suppose the Supreme Court seeks to resolve the same circuit split by granting certiorari in a case arising out of a circuit that construes the statute in the government’s favor and affirming that circuit’s interpretation. May United States Attorneys in circuits that had previously construed the statute more narrowly now indict individuals for conduct predating the Court’s decision, where the conduct was lawful under those circuits’ prior precedents but is unlawful under the Court’s new decision? The answer may seem obvious. Indeed, at least one prominent treatise on criminal law would apparently characterize these examples as presenting the “easiest case” for holding that the Court’s new decision may not be applied retroactively.7 Moreover, the Supreme Court’s recent 5.Id. 6.Id. at 267. 7. 1 WAYNE R. LAFAVE & AUSTIN W. SCOTT, JR., SUBSTANTIVE CRIMINAL LAW § 2.4, at 143 (2d ed. 1986) (“Perhaps the easiest case is that in which a judicial decision subsequent to the 2001] RETROACTIVE EXPANSION OF CRIMINAL STATUTES 457 description of the fair warning requirement in United States v. Lanier,8 while not addressing the specific questions raised here, seems to suggest the same. In Lanier’s terms, the existence of settled in-circuit precedent holding a defendant’s conduct to be lawful would appear to mean it was not “reasonably clear” that his conduct was unlawful when undertaken.9 The Supreme Court, however, has held otherwise. In 1984, the Court in United States v. Rodgers10 addressed the question, over which the circuits were split, whether making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) violates the False Statements Accountability Act.11 The Eighth Circuit had affirmed the dismissal of the indictment against defendant Rodgers because settled Eighth Circuit precedent construed the Act as not covering false statements to the FBI.12 The Court disagreed, and reinstated the indictment. Then, in the penultimate sentence of its opinion, the Court held: [A]ny argument by respondent against retroactive application to him of our present decision, even if he could establish reliance upon the earlier [Eighth Circuit] decision, would be unavailing since the existence of conflicting cases from other Courts of Appeals made review of that issue by this Court and decision against the position of the respondent reasonably foreseeable.13 With that single sentence, Rodgers announced a rule that whenever the circuits are split as to whether certain conduct is covered by a criminal statute, a decision resolving the split in the government’s favor can retroactively authorize the prosecution of individuals who engaged in that conduct even in circuits where the conduct had been held lawful.14 defendant’s conduct operates to his detriment by overruling a prior decision which, if applied to the defendant’s case, would result in his acquittal. Under such circumstances, the overruling decision . is not applied retroactively, at least when the defendant’s conduct is not malum in se.”) (footnote omitted). 8. 520 U.S. 259 (1997). 9.Id. at 266. 10. 466 U.S. 475 (1984). 11. 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (1994). The Act provides that “[w]hoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States knowingly and willfully . makes any false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or representations . shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” Id. 12.See United States v. Rodgers, 706 F.2d 854 (8th Cir. 1983) (citing and following Friedman v. United States, 374 F.2d 363 (8th Cir. 1967)). 13. Rodgers, 466 U.S. at 484. 14.See Walter V. Schaefer, Reliance on the Law of the Circuit—A Requiem, 1985 DUKE L.J. 690, 691. As retired Illinois Supreme Court Justice Schaefer puts it, under Rodgers: [N]o one has any right to rely on a federal circuit court of appeals decision in ordering his affairs. Not only does the reliability of a court of appeals decision vanish in the face of a 458 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 74:455 In the years since it was announced, the Rodgers rule has kept a decidedly low profile. While the Supreme Court has occasionally resolved cases in a manner implicitly consistent with Rodgers,15 it has eschewed direct examination of the rule.16 Scholarly attention, too, has been scant.17 Simply to state the Rodgers rule is to provoke a welter of questions about its basis, scope, and ramifications. When the Supreme Court overrules a circuit court’s interpretation of a criminal statute to the disadvantage of the defendant, does the fair warning requirement described in Lanier not restrain retroactive application of the decision? Does a split among the federal circuits truly provide the requisite fair warning? From a more institutional standpoint, does a circuit court’s authority to “say what the law is”18 depend on its agreement with the decisions of other courts in other jurisdictions? Indeed, if the Rodgers rule provides that a defendant may be prosecuted for conduct that was lawful under binding circuit precedent, does the rule thereby authorize prosecutors to ignore circuit precedent whenever other circuits read criminal statutes more broadly? conflict among the circuits, but the possibility of a future conflict robs every court of appeals decision of reliability. Id.
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