United States v. Hamilton
| Decision Date | 28 April 2016 |
| Docket Number | CRIMINAL ACTION FILE NUMBER 1:15-cr-0240-TCB |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Georgia |
| Parties | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. DWIGHT HAMILTON, Defendant. |
This case comes before the Court on Magistrate Judge Linda T. Walker's Report and Recommendation (the "R&R") [56], which recommends that Defendant Dwight Hamilton's motions to dismiss the charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1519 [14, 15], as supplemented [42, 43], and his motion to dismiss the charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1512 [44] be denied. Hamilton has filed objections to the R&R [59].
Hamilton, a sergeant in the DeKalb County Sheriff's office, is charged with five counts of using excessive force against inmates in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242 (), six counts of falsifying jail incident reports in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519 () and two counts of corruptly persuading another employee to adopt a false report in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(3) () [25]. Hamilton moved to dismiss all of the false incident report charges under § 1519 on both statutory and constitutional grounds [14, 15, 42, 43]. He also moved to dismiss the tampering counts under § 1512 for failing to state a necessary element of the crime.
A district judge has a duty to conduct a "careful and complete" review of a magistrate judge's R&R. Williams v. Wainwright, 681 F.2d 732, 732 (11th Cir. 1982) (per curiam) (quoting Nettles v. Wainwright, 677 F.2d 404, 408 (5th Cir. Unit B 1982)).1 Where a party objects to an R&R, a district judge "shall make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or specified proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made." 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C).The district judge must "give fresh consideration to those issues to which specific objection has been made by a party." Jeffrey S. v. State Bd. of Educ., 896 F.2d 507, 512 (11th Cir. 1990). Those portions of the R&R to which no objection is made need only be reviewed for clear error. Macort v. Prem, Inc., 208 F. App'x 781, 784 (11th Cir. 2006).2
Nettles, 677 F.2d at 410 n.8. "This rule facilitates the opportunity for district judges to spend more time on matters actually contested and produces a result compatible with the purposes of the Magistrates Act." Id. at 410.
After conducting a complete and careful review of the R&R, the district judge may accept, reject or modify the magistrate judge'sfindings and recommendations. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C); Williams, 681 F.2d at 732. The district judge may also receive further evidence or recommit the matter to the magistrate judge with instructions. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C). The district judge also has discretion to decline to consider arguments that were not raised before the magistrate judge. Williams v. McNeil, 557 F.3d 1287, 1292 (11th Cir. 2009). Indeed, a contrary rule "would effectively nullify the magistrate judge's consideration of the matter and would not help to relieve the workload of the district court." Id. (quoting United States v. Howell, 231 F.3d 615, 622 (9th Cir. 2000)).
Hamilton is charged with six counts of falsifying jail incident reports in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519, which punishes anyone who "knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object" that is part of a contemplated or actual federal investigation. § 1519 (emphasis added). He argues that under Yates v. United States, 574 U.S. ___, 135 S.Ct. 1074 (2015) a jail incident report doesn't qualify as a "record," "document," or other "tangible object."
In Yates the Supreme Court construed "tangible object" to cover objects that one can use to record or preserve information, and thus held that fish were not covered by this definition. Id. at 1079. Clearly an incident report records and preserves information. But a jail incident report need not qualify as a "tangible object," since it qualifies as a "record" or document." The Eleventh Circuit has held that police reports are "records" or "documents" for the purposes of § 1519, and the Court is not persuaded that jail incident reports are meaningfully different. United States v. Hunt, 526 F.3d 739, 743 (11th Cir. 2008) ().
Hamilton also argues that § 1519 was enacted as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 "designed to protect investors and restore trust in financial markets" and that the Supreme Court therefore intended for lower courts to interpret and apply § 1519 in the context of Sarbanes-Oxley only. Yet as the R&R correctly points out, this is foundnowhere in Yates: the Supreme Court merely decided that "tangible object" as used in the statute is not subject to a completely "unrestrained reading" and does not include any and all objects in the physical world, unless such an object records or preserves information. Yates, 135 S. Ct. at 1079. Moreover the Eleventh Circuit has previously rejected the argument Hamilton attempts to make:
[The Defendant] makes much of the fact that § 1519 was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was targeted at corporate fraud and executive malfeasance. . . . But that same breadth bears no hint of any limiting principle cabining § 1519 to corporate fraud cases, and Congress is free to pass laws with language covering areas well beyond the particular crisis du jour that initially prompted legislative action.
Hunt, 526 F.3d at 744. Indeed, federal courts of appeal have routinely affirmed $1519 convictions predicated on falsified reports written by correctional officers, and the discussion of the "tangible object" definition in Yates would not alter those outcomes. See United States v. McQueen, 727 F.3d 1144 (11th Cir. 2013), United States v. Schmeltz, 667 F.3d 685 (6th Cir. 2011), United States v. Gray, 642 F.3d 371 (2d Cir. 2011), United States v. Morris, 404 F. App'x 916 (5th Cir. 2010).
Therefore, the Court adopts Magistrate Judge Walker's finding that § 1519 can be applied outside the context of financial fraud, and Hamilton's motion to dismiss the § 1519 claims on this ground will be denied.
Hamilton argues that § 1519 is unconstitutionally vague for two principal reasons: (1) the statute does not include a corrupt intent requirement, and (2) the statute does not require the Government to prove a sufficient nexus or temporal period between a defendant's conduct and an actual federal investigation.
"As generally stated, the void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement." Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357 (1983). "[T]he vagueness doctrine bars enforcement of 'a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to itsapplication.'" United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 266 (1997) (quoting Connally v. Gen. Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926)).
The Eleventh Circuit has previously upheld § 1519 on a vagueness challenge. Hunt, 526 F.3d at 743 (). Hamilton nevertheless argues that the statute is vague because it does not contain a requirement that the defendant "acted with culpable intent relative to a known duty to preserve records." As with all challenges for vagueness, the Court begins with the text of the statute, which contains clear language of intent: "[w]hoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence . . . ." § 1519 (emphasis added). Courts have routinely found that this language codifies two intent requirements for § 1519: that "the accused's intent must be wrongful . . . and the requisite intent to influence, obstruct or impede an investigation." United States v. Yielding, 657 F.3d 688, 713 (8th Cir. 2011); see also Hunt, 526 F.3d at 543; United States v. Moyer, 674 F.3d 192, 211 (3dCir. 2012); United States v. Kernell, 667 F.3d 746, 753 (6th Cir. 2012). The second intent requirement directly addresses Hamilton's concern by tying the wrongful action directly to the intent to impede or influence an investigation. This is true even if the defendant is unaware of a specific investigation. See Kernell, 667 F.3d at 755 ().
Hamilton next argues that § 1519 lacks a nexus between the alleged obstructive conduct and a federal investigation. While § 1519 does not contain a specific temporal requirement, the plain language of the statute requires that the defendant intended to impede, obstruct or influence an investigation, thus providing sufficient nexus between the act and the investigation. Moreover, the Eleventh Circuit has upheld convictions under § 1519 where the Defendant knew that the federal government could investigate such incidents, and a person of ordinary intelligence would understand such conduct was proscribed. Hunt at 742-43 (...
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