Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-5572_l6hn.pdf
Page Number: 16

12 

FISCHER v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

three  years’  imprisonment  for  someone  who  harasses  an-
other person and thereby dissuades him from attending an
official proceeding.

Reading  (c)(2)  to  cover  all  forms  of  obstructive  conduct
would override Congress’s careful delineation of which pen-
alties were appropriate for which offenses.  Most instances 
of those prohibited acts would instead fall under subsection 
(c)(2)’s sweeping reach, which provides a 20-year maximum
term of imprisonment.  Such a reading of subsection (c)(2)
would lump together disparate types of conduct for which
Congress had assigned proportionate penalties in (a)(2) and 
(d)(1).2 

3 
The Government’s responses to this surplusage problem

are not convincing.

It  first  argues  that  because  other  provisions  in  Section
1512  would  allow  conviction  in  some  circumstances  on  a 
“lesser  mens  rea  than  ‘corruptly,’ ”  they  have  “a  broader 
compass”  than  (c)(2).  Brief  for  United  States  34.  For  in-
stance, the Government contends that subsection (b) can be
violated by “knowing use of intimidation or threats, or mis-
leading conduct.” Id., at 35.  But the Government concedes 
that “Congress did not define ‘corruptly’ for purposes of Sec-
tion 1512.”  Id., at 44.  And while the Government suggests 
that “corruptly” is “ ‘normally associated with wrongful, im-
moral, depraved, or evil’  conduct,” ibid. (quoting Arthur An-
dersen LLP v. United States, 544 U. S. 696, 705 (2005)), it 

—————— 

2 The  dissent  maintains  we  have  “ ‘glosse[d]  over  the  absence  of  any 
prescribed  minimum.’ ”  Post,  at  14  (quoting  Yates,  574  U. S.,  at  569 
(KAGAN, J., dissenting)).  Congress might have thought (c)(2) prohibited
conduct of varying severity.  But it does not follow that it designed (c)(2) 
to reach forms of conduct already covered in Chapter 73 with far lower 
maximum sentences.  It would be improper to substitute for those fine-
grained statutory distinctions the charging discretion of prosecutors and 
the sentencing discretion of district courts.