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Page Number: 13

10 

YATES v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of GINSBURG, J. 

(“words  are  chameleons,  which  reflect  the  color  of  their 
environment”).  Just  as  the  context  of  Rule  16  supports 
giving “tangible object” a meaning as broad as its diction-
ary  definition,  the  context  of  §1519  tugs  strongly  in  favor 
of a narrower reading. 

B 
Familiar interpretive guides aid our construction of the

words “tangible object” as they appear in §1519. 

We  note  first  §1519’s  caption:  “Destruction,  alteration,
or  falsification  of  records  in  Federal  investigations  and
bankruptcy.”  That heading conveys no suggestion that the 
section  prohibits  spoliation  of  any  and  all  physical  evi-
dence,  however  remote  from  records.    Neither  does  the 
title  of  the  section  of  the  Sarbanes-Oxley  Act  in  which 
§1519  was  placed,  §802:  “Criminal  penalties  for  altering 
documents.”  116 Stat. 800.  Furthermore, §1520, the only 
other  provision  passed  as  part  of  §802,  is  titled  “Destruc-
tion  of  corporate  audit  records”  and  addresses  only  that
specific  subset  of  records  and  documents.    While  these 
headings  are  not  commanding,  they  supply  cues  that 
Congress  did  not  intend  “tangible  object”  in  §1519  to
sweep  within  its  reach  physical  objects  of  every  kind, 
including  things  no  one  would  describe  as  records,  docu-
ments,  or  devices  closely  associated  with  them.    See 
Almendarez-Torres  v.  United  States,  523  U. S.  224,  234 
(1998)  (“[T]he  title  of  a  statute  and  the  heading  of  a  sec-
tion are tools available for the resolution of a doubt about 
the  meaning  of  a  statute.”  (internal  quotation  marks
omitted)).  If Congress indeed meant to make §1519 an all-
encompassing  ban  on  the  spoliation  of  evidence,  as  the
dissent  believes  Congress  did,  one  would  have  expected  a 
clearer indication of that intent. 

Section  1519’s  position  within  Chapter  73  of  Title  18
further signals that §1519 was not intended to serve as a 
cross-the-board  ban  on  the  destruction  of  physical  evi-