![]() ![]() Code § 1519 - Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy Here’s the relevant portion of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a response to the Enron and WorldCom bankruptcy scandals in which company executives destroyed massive numbers of incriminating documents:ġ8 U.S. But he appealed his conviction for destroying undersized grouper because the law he was convicted under was passed to prevent the illegal destruction of business records, not fish. Yates served thirty days in jail for his violation and lost his captain’s license. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illustrates approved ways to measure a fish. The court didn’t buy this fish story and convicted Yates of one count of disposing of undersized fish to prevent federal agencies from enforcing the law, and one count of destroying the undersized fish to influence a federal investigation. Yates ordered them to replace the under-sized groupers with longer ones and throw the illegally-caught fish overboard.Īt his trial, Yates insisted that the groupers that got away were really bigger than they seemed, since the conservation officer had measured the fish with their mouths closed, which shortens them. ![]() When the fishing boat docked, inspectors found that three of the fish in the crate had been switched. His boat, the Miss Katie, was boarded by a state conservation officer, who found seventy-two red grouper that were under the legal twenty-inch minimum length, issued a citation for illegal fishing, and ordered the suspect fish put into a crate to be turned over to federal agents when the Miss Katie returned to port. ![]() In August, 2007, Yates was fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. John Yates, the ex-captain of a fishing boat, was convicted under a law that makes it illegal to destroy records, documents, or tangible objects in order to impede a federal investigation, and he’s asking the United States Supreme Court to reverse that conviction because fish aren’t “tangible objects.” He ought to know he catches them for a living. Can you touch a fish? One fisherman says that you can’t. ![]()
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