United States v. Andresean

• Decision Date: 03 October 2012
• Docket Number: CRIMINAL NO. 12-0152-WS
• Parties: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ANDREAS ANDRESEAN, JR., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Alabama

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
ANDREAS ANDRESEAN, JR., Defendant.

CRIMINAL NO. 12-0152-WS

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA SOUTHERN DIVISION

Date: October 3, 2012

ORDER

This matter is before the Court on the government's motion in limine. (Doc. 47). The defendant has filed a response, (Doc. 50), and the motion is ripe for resolution.

The defendant is charged with marriage fraud and conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. The pertinent statute makes it a crime to "ente[r] into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws." 8 U.S.C. §1325(c). The government seeks an order prohibiting the defendant and those associated with him from suggesting before the jury that the government must prove that the defendant's "sole" purpose in entering the marriage was to evade an immigration law. The government relies primarily on two appellate opinions addressing this issue.

In United States v. Chowdhury, 169 F.3d 402 (6th Cir. 1999), the jury was charged that the second element of an offense under Section 1325(c) is that the defendant "knowingly entered into the marriage for the purpose of evading the United States immigration laws." Id. at 406. On appeal, the defendant argued that the charge should have read that the defendant knowingly entered the marriage "with the intention and ... for the sole purposes of evading the United States immigration laws." Id. at 407 (emphasis in original). The Sixth Circuit disagreed, ruling that "nothing in the statute requires the additional language proposed by the defendant." Id.

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In United States v. Borodyonok, 286 Fed. Appx. 97 (4th Cir. 2008), the defendant claimed the trial judge demonstrated bias by charging the jury "that the Government need only prove that at least one of Borodyonok's purposes ... was to evade the immigration laws and that it did not have to be his sole purpose." Id. at 99. According to the Fourth Circuit, however, "[t]hat Borodyonok may have married Farrell with the additional intent of having consensual sex with her ... does not somehow mitigate his intent to violate the immigration laws." Id.

Both Chowdhury and Borodyonok support the proposition that a defendant can be convicted under Section 1325(c) without proof that evading the immigration laws was the defendant's exclusive purpose. While neither appellate court provided much explanation for its conclusion, such reasoning exists.

"It is a cardinal principle of statutory construction that a statute ought, upon the whole, be so construed that, if it can be prevented, no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant." TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U.S. 19, 31 (2001) (internal quotes omitted); accord United States v. Home Concrete & Supply, LLC, 132 S. Ct. 1836, 1841-42 (2012). Congress has passed many laws employing the term "the sole purpose."¹ In order to avoid rendering the qualifier "sole" superfluous in all these statutes, the term "the sole purpose" must be

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construed as more restrictive than "the purpose."² It must be supposed, then, that Congress advisedly omitted "sole" from Section 1325(c) precisely because it did not intend to limit criminal liability to those who marry with only the singular and exclusive purpose, unaccompanied by any other, of evading the immigration laws.

The defendant ignores Chowdhury and Borodyonok, but he raises four arguments in opposition to the government's motion. First, that case law under the ADEA demonstrates that "the purpose" connotes at least but-for causation. Second, that the Citizenship and Immigration Service utilizes a "sole purpose" standard. Third, that the United States Attorney's office has previously taken the position that Section 1325(c) requires the government to prove that evading immigration law was the sole purpose of the marriage. And fourth, that any lower standard would render Section 1325(c) an unconstitutional infringement on the right to marry. The Court considers these objections in turn.

The ADEA makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee "because of" the employee's age. 29 U.S.C. § 623(a). This quoted language means that an ADEA plaintiff in a disparate treatment case "must prove that age was the 'but-for' cause of the employer's adverse decision." Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U.S. 167, 176 (2009). According to the defendant, "because of" is "analogous" to "for the purpose of," such that Section 1325(c) must require at least that evasion of the immigration laws be the "but for" purpose of the marriage. (Doc. 50 at 2-3). While not implausible, the defendant's terse, unamplified argument glosses over such differences as terminology and criminal versus civil liability. At any rate, resolution of the argument is unnecessary to resolution of the government's motion; even were the Court persuaded that evasion must be the "but for" purpose of the marriage, this would

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not answer the question, posed by the motion in limine, of whether evasion must be the "sole" purpose of the marriage.³

The defendant purports to quote from a manual addressing administrative evaluation of a marriage between a citizen and an applicant for lawful permanent resident status, which indicates that "the petition may be approved if the marriage is valid and was not entered into solely for immigration purposes." (Doc. 50 at 3). The defendant does not identify the statutory language, if any, the manual purports to interpret, and he does not even submit the manual so the Court can confirm the accuracy and relevance of the language on which he relies. Certainly the defendant does not explain how the manual - which does not rise to the dignity of a formally adopted rule - could control or even influence the interpretation of Section 1325(c).

On June 19 of this year, the Assistant United States...