Fwd: NYT: Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case

[Brenda Vaca]

Here is an article of interest!

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Arnoldo Garcia" <aga...@nnirr.org>

Date: May 5, 2009 10:38:28 AM PDT

To: "Arnoldo Garcia \(Arnoldo Garcia\)" <aga...@nnirr.org>

Subject: NYT: Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/us/05scotus.html

 

Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case

By DAVID STOUT

Published: May 4, 2009

 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that the federal government has been going too far in using identity-theft laws to prosecute undocumented workers who use fake identification to get and hold jobs.

 

In limiting the use of a law enacted in 2004 that has become a favorite weapon of the authorities who go after illegal immigrants, the justices said that to use it, a prosecutor must be able to show that a defendant knew that the identification he used actually belonged to another person.

 

The ruling in Flores-Figueroa v. United States, No. 08-108, was written by Justice Stephen G. Breyer and relied heavily on the wording of the statute, specifically its language regarding when a defendant can be properly accused of “knowingly” and unlawfully using another person’s identification.

 

“As a matter of ordinary English grammar, it seems natural to read the statute’s word ‘knowingly’ as applying to all the subsequently listed elements of the crime,” Justice Breyer wrote, going on to discuss transitive verbs, their objects and the appropriate placement of adverbs.

 

The ruling was a victory for Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican citizen who got a job at an Illinois steel plan in 2000. He originally used a false name and a fake Social Security number, one that did not match that of any real person.

 

Six years later, perhaps wishing to emerge at least partly from the shadow world in which illegal immigrants live and work, Mr. Flores-Figueroa told his employer he wanted to be known by his real name. He also presented forged Social Security and alien registration cards — documents that, fatefully, bore numbers that happened to be assigned to other people.

 

When Mr. Flores-Figueroa’s situation came to light, he pleaded guilty to several immigration offenses, resulting in a 51-month sentence. But he contested the identity-theft charges, asserting that the government showed no evidence that he knowingly used numbers assigned to other people.

 

Nevertheless, he was convicted of aggravated identity theft and sentenced to the mandatory two additional years of confinement.

 

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, upheld the conviction, saying that the government needed to prove only a knowing use of false information — not that the defendant knew the fake number actually belonged to a real person.

 

It was that reasoning that the Supreme Court rejected on Monday, depriving the authorities not only of a prosecutorial tool but also of a means to pressure immigrants to plead guilty to lesser charges and agree to be deported. That was what happened to about 400 illegal workers arrested at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in May 2008 in one of the most conspicuous immigration-enforcement incidents in recent years.

 

Justice Breyer said the ruling should not affect the pursuit and prosecution of identity theft in general, since in a typical case an offender who uses someone else’s credit card or bank document knows full well that the credit card or bank document he uses belongs to a real person, and that the person will be harmed by the fraud.

 

Kevin K. Russell, the lawyer who argued Mr. Flores-Figueroa’s case before the Supreme Court, said his client is in federal prison in Georgia. Mr. Russell is an instructor with the Stanford University Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, which offers free representation to a variety of individuals and groups before the United States Supreme Court.

 

When his client’s prison term is up, “I assume the government will try to deport him,” Mr. Russell said.

 

As for the immigrants rounded up in Iowa a year ago, an interpreter assigned to their hearings testified that most of the immigrants did not know that the numbers they used belonged to other people. Indeed, the immigrants generally did not know what a Social Security card was.

Rev. Brenda Vaca
Ministerios Nueva Vida/New Life Ministries
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