Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7451_m64o.pdf
Page Number: 20

Cite as:  574 U. S. ____ (2015) 

17 

Opinion of GINSBURG, J. 

any and every kind in a provision targeting fraud in finan-
cial record-keeping.

The  Government  argues,  however,  that  our  inquiry 
would be incomplete if we failed to consider the origins of 
the  phrase  “record,  document,  or  tangible  object.”    Con-
gress drew that phrase, the Government says, from a 1962 
Model  Penal  Code  (MPC)  provision,  and  reform  proposals
based  on  that  provision.    The  MPC  provision  and  pro-
posals  prompted  by  it  would  have  imposed  liability  on 
anyone  who  “alters,  destroys,  mutilates,  conceals,  or  re-
moves  a  record,  document  or  thing.”  See  ALI,  MPC
§241.7(1), p. 175 (1962).  Those proscriptions were under-
stood  to  refer  to  all  physical  evidence.    See  MPC  §241.7, 
Comment 3, at 179 (1980) (provision “applies to any physi-
cal  object”).  Accordingly,  the  Government  reasons,  and 
the  dissent  exuberantly  agrees,  post,  at  4–5,  Congress
must  have  intended  §1519  to  apply  to  the  universe  of
physical evidence.

The  inference  is  unwarranted.  True,  the  1962  MPC 
provision  prohibited  tampering  with  any  kind  of  physical
evidence.  But  unlike  §1519,  the  MPC  provision  did  not 
prohibit  actions  that  specifically  relate  to  records,  docu-
ments, and objects used to record or preserve information.
The  MPC  provision  also  ranked  the  offense  as  a  misde-
meanor  and  limited  liability  to  instances  in  which  the 
actor “believ[es] that an official proceeding or investigation
is  pending  or  about  to  be  instituted.”    MPC  §241.7(1),  at 
175.  Yates  would  have  had  scant  reason  to  anticipate  a
felony  prosecution,  and  certainly  not  one  instituted  at  a
time  when  even  the  smallest  of  the  fish  he  caught  came 
within the legal limit.  See supra, at 4; cf. Bond v. United 
States, 572 U. S. ___, ___ (2014), (slip op., at 14) (rejecting 
“boundless  reading”  of  a  statutory  term  given  “deeply 
serious  consequences”  that  reading  would  entail).    A  pro-
posed  federal  offense  in  line  with  the  MPC  provision, 
advanced  by  a  federal  commission  in  1971,  was  similarly