Opinion ID: 710073
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Reasonableness In The Light Of A Concrete Meaning

Text: 86 In this case, the INS employed a definition of a crime involving moral turpitude as a crime involving conduct which is inherently base, vile, or depraved, and contrary to the accepted rules of morality and duties owed between persons or to society in general. I acknowledge that the definition of crime involving moral turpitude employed by the INS is used with remarkable consistency. See, e.g., Rodriguez-Herrera v. INS, 52 F.3d 238, 239 (9th Cir.1995) (whether a crime is one involving moral turpitude depends on whether crime is one that necessarily involves an 'act of baseness or depravity contrary to accepted moral standards,'  quoting Grageda v. INS, 12 F.3d 919, 921 (9th Cir.1993), in turn quoting Guerrero de Nodahl v. INS, 407 F.2d 1405, 1406 (9th Cir.1969)); Grageda v. INS, 12 F.3d 919, 921 (9th Cir.1993); Guerrero de Nodahl v. INS, 407 F.2d 1405, 1406 (9th Cir.1969); and compare Hunter, 471 U.S. at 226, 105 S.Ct. at 1919 (Alabama Supreme Court's definition of crime involving moral turpitude in the Alabama constitutional provision disqualifying voters convicted of such crimes was an act that is ' immoral in itself, regardless of the fact whether it is punishable by law. The doing of the act itself, and not its prohibition by statute[,] fixes the moral turpitude, '  quoting Pippin v. State, 197 Ala. 613, 73 So. 340, 342 (1916), in turn quoting Fort v. Brinkley, 87 Ark. 400, 112 S.W. 1084 (1908)). Hence, whatever dictionary the INS used to select such a definition, it was in good company, and my disagreement with the majority and with the INS does not lie in the words they have used to define moral turpitude. Rather, my disagreement lies in the reach given that definition by both the majority and the INS, in the first instance, to include criminally reckless conduct within the ambit of crimes that necessarily involve moral turpitude, and, in the second instance, to include the crime, defined by Missouri law, of which Myrisia Franklin was convicted. 87 There are a few cases that attempt to develop a concrete definition of what is a crime involving moral turpitude by looking at the elements of this definition of moral turpitude or by drawing from the crimes universally recognized as involving moral turpitude those characteristics that define the general class of crimes involving moral turpitude. Among the most valiant of such efforts was that undertaken by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Rodriguez-Herrera v. INS, 52 F.3d 238 (9th Cir.1995). 88 In Rodriguez-Herrera, the court tried to discover from the anecdotal decisions finding or not finding moral turpitude to inhere in certain categories of offenses some guiding principles or defining characteristics that could be used to recognize or classify certain crimes as involving moral turpitude. See Rodriguez-Herrera, 52 F.3d at 240-41. In other words, the court attempted to develop what might be called a taxonomy of moral turpitude. 89 The court in Rodriguez-Herrera discovered that 90 [f]or crimes like malicious mischief that are not of the gravest character, a requirement of fraud has ordinarily been required.... 91 On the other hand, certain crimes necessarily involving rather grave acts of baseness or depravity may qualify as crimes of moral turpitude even though they have no element of fraud. Applying this standard we have found that spousal abuse, child abuse, first-degree incest, and having carnal knowledge with a 15 year old female, all involve moral turpitude.... 92 Id. at 240 (citations omitted). Applying these principles, the court held that the Washington statute prohibiting malicious mischief did not define a crime involving moral turpitude. Id. Although the crime included an evil intent element in the form of malice, it was a minor offense, including pranks resulting from poor judgment, that lacked either depravity or fraud, and therefore did not involve moral turpitude. Id. The INS resisted this conclusion, arguing that if a statute requires an evil intent, wish, or design to vex, annoy, or injure another person, as the Washington statute defining malice did, it defined a crime necessarily involving moral turpitude. Id. The court rejected this proposition: 93 It is true that in the fraud context we have placed a great deal of weight on the requirement of an evil intent. But even in this context, we have not held that if a statute requires evil intent, it necessarily involves moral turpitude. We have held only that without an evil intent, a statute does not necessarily involve moral turpitude. See Hirsch v. INS, 308 F.2d 562, 567 (9th Cir.1962) (A crime that does not necessarily involve evil intent, such as an intent to defraud, is not necessarily a crime involving moral turpitude.) To state the proposition positively, we have held that in the fraud context an evil intent is necessary, but not sufficient, for a crime inevitably to involve moral turpitude. Cf. Gonzalez-Alvarado [v. INS ], 39 F.3d [245,] 246 [ (9th Cir.1994) ] (holding that [a] crime involving the willful commission of a base or depraved act is a crime involving moral turpitude, whether or not the statute requires proof of evil intent.). 94 Id. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument that all crimes requiring some degree of evil intent are necessarily crimes involving moral turpitude. Id. at 241. The court reasoned that 95 evil intent may become much too attenuated to imbue the crime with the character of fraud or depravity that we have associated with moral turpitude. At least outside of the fraud context, the bare presence of some degree of evil intent is not enough to convert a crime that is not serious into one of moral turpitude leading to deportation under [former] section 241(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. 96 Id. (footnote omitted). The court held that Washington's statutory definition of malicious mischief defined such a crime in which evil intent was too attenuated for the crime to be one that necessarily involved moral turpitude. Id. Therefore, an alien convicted under the Washington malicious mischief statute was not deportable for conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude. Id. 97 The classifying principles or taxonomy of moral turpitude as stated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Rodriguez-Herrera may be distilled into the following propositions: 1) for minor crimes, an element of fraud has been required; 2) for fraud crimes, an element of evil intent, such as intent to defraud, is necessary, but not sufficient, to define a crime as one involving moral turpitude; 3) for serious crimes, an element of baseness or depravity suffices even if there is no explicit element of fraud or evil intent; 4) at least for minor crimes not involving fraud, evil intent may become too attenuated to meet the requirement of either fraud or depravity such that the crime necessarily involves moral turpitude. Id. at 240-41. 98 Other cases, nearly all of them also decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in which the court attempted to develop a classification system for crimes that necessarily do or do not involve moral turpitude, have grappled with similar defining elements. Notable among these decisions are two cited by the court in Rodriguez-Herrera. See, e.g., Gonzalez-Alvarado v. INS, 39 F.3d 245 (9th Cir.1994) (holding that [a] crime involving the willful commission of a base or depraved act is a crime involving moral turpitude, whether or not the statute requires proof of evil intent.); Hirsch v. INS, 308 F.2d 562, 567 (9th Cir.1962) (A crime that does not necessarily involve evil intent, such as an intent to defraud, is not necessarily a crime involving moral turpitude.). A theme running through all of these decisions is the relationship between evil intent and other elements of the crime as defining a crime involving moral turpitude. 99 For example, in Gonzalez-Alvarado v. INS, 39 F.3d 245 (9th Cir.1994), a decision slightly earlier than Rodriguez-Herrera, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals made a similar attempt to develop a classification system of crimes involving moral turpitude from its prior, anecdotal decisions: 100 Typically, crimes of moral turpitude involve fraud. See Grageda v. U.S. INS, 12 F.3d 919, 921 (9th Cir.1993); Goldeshtein, 8 F.3d at 647. However, we have included in this category acts of baseness or depravity contrary to accepted moral standards, Grageda, 12 F.3d at 921 (quotation omitted), such as spousal abuse, child abuse, and statutory rape which involve moral turpitude by their very nature. See id. at 922 (spousal abuse); Guerrero de Nodahl v. INS, 407 F.2d 1405, 1406-07 (9th Cir.1969) (child abuse); Bendel v. Nagle, 17 F.2d 719, 720 (9th Cir.1927) (statutory rape). Incest also involves an act of baseness or depravity contrary to accepted moral standards, and we hold that it too is a crime involving moral turpitude. See also II American Law Institute, Model Penal Code and Commentaries Sec. 230.2 cmt. 2(d), 406-07 (1980) (recognizing that laws against incest reinforce a community norm of general and intense hostility toward such conduct). 101 Gonzalez-Alvarado, 39 F.3d at 246. Taking a slightly different approach to the evil intent element from the later decision in Rodriguez-Herrera, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Gonzalez-Alvarado found that [e]ven if evil intent is not explicit in the definition of [a crime under state law], we have held that 'a crime nevertheless may involve moral turpitude if such intent is implicit in the nature of the crime.'  Gonzalez-Alvarado, 39 F.3d at 246 (quoting Goldeshtein, 8 F.3d at 648). The court therefore concluded that [a] crime involving a willful commission of a base or depraved act is a crime involving moral turpitude, whether or not the statute requires proof of evil intent. Id. (citing Grageda, 12 F.3d at 922, and Guerrero de Nodahl, 407 F.2d at 1407); see also Guerrero de Nodahl, 407 F.2d at 1407 (child beating is considered so heinous that willful conduct and moral turpitude are synonymous). Thus, rather than creating a separate category of crimes involving moral turpitude based on depravity or baseness instead of evil intent, I read Gonzalez-Alvarado to hold that elements of baseness and depravity define a crime in which evil intent is implicit, even if evil intent is not separately and explicitly made an element of the offense. Id.; Cf. Rodriguez-Herrera, 52 F.3d at 240 ([E]vil intent is necessary, but not sufficient, for a crime inevitably to involve moral turpitude.). 102 This reading is in accord with other decisions, none of which find a crime involves moral turpitude unless evil intent or guilty knowledge is a required element. See Goldeshtein, 8 F.3d at 648 (crime that does not necessarily involve evil intent is not necessarily a crime involving moral turpitude, citing Hirsch, 308 F.2d at 567); Gutierrez-Chavez, 8 F.3d at 26 (Table), 1993 WL 394916, at  3 (9th Cir.1993) (referring to state case law to find guilty knowledge requirement implicit in definition of recklessly receiving stolen property); Lennon v. INS, 527 F.2d 187, 194 (2d Cir.1975) (Congress would not have classified an alien as deportable if the crime of which the alien was convicted made guilty knowledge irrelevant); Wadman, 329 F.2d at 814 (where guilty knowledge is an essential element of a crime, moral turpitude is present); Hirsch, 308 F.2d at 567 (crime that does not necessarily involve evil intent is not necessarily a crime involving moral turpitude); Matter of P, 2 I. & N. Dec. 117, 121 (BIA 1944) (it is in the intent that moral turpitude inheres.). Furthermore, decisions also hold that such an intent or knowledge element may be implicit rather than explicit. Goldeshtein, 8 F.3d at 648-49 (evil intent, in the form of intent to defraud, may be implicit rather than explicit, but no such implicit intent to defraud was apparent in particular offense, structuring currency transactions to avoid currency reports, at issue); McNaughton, 612 F.2d at 459 (evil intent element may appear from the statutory definition or the nature of the crime); Winestock v. INS, 576 F.2d 234, 235 (9th Cir.1978) (evil intent, in the form of intent to defraud, may be implicit in the nature of the crime, and thus the crime involves moral turpitude); Matter of Flores, 17 I. & N. Dec. 225, 228 (BIA 1980) (where fraud is inherent in an offense, it is not necessary that the statute prohibiting it include the usual phraseology concerning fraud in order for it to involve moral turpitude). 103 In Grageda, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals focused on another element in the definition of the crime, this time willfulness, and its relationship to baseness and depravity. Grageda, 12 F.3d at 922. Because spousal abuse as defined under California law was an act of baseness or depravity contrary to accepted moral standards, and willfulness was one of its elements, the court held that spousal abuse was a crime involving moral turpitude. Id. The appellant argued that such a conclusion equated conduct done willfully with moral turpitude. Id. The court, however, found that 104 the term 'willfully' does not constitute moral turpitude. Rather, it is the combination of the base or depraved act and the willfulness of the action that makes the crime one of moral turpitude. 105 Id. The court suggested that it was the willfulness of the injurious conduct to one committed to a relationship of trust that, in part, made the act of spousal abuse base and depraved. Id.; see also Goldeshtein, 8 F.3d at 648 (proof that defendant acted willfully is not the same as proving the evil intent required for a crime involving moral turpitude in a deportation case;  ' wilful means no more than that the forbidden act is done deliberately and with knowledge,'  quoting Hirsch, 308 F.2d at 566, in turn quoting Neely v. United States, 300 F.2d 67, 72 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 369 U.S. 864, 82 S.Ct. 1030, 8 L.Ed.2d 84 (1962)). 22 106 Thus, in light of these cases, the classification system I believe is applicable to the question of whether or not a crime as defined is one in which moral turpitude necessarily inheres is as follows: 1) evil intent, either explicit or implicit, is necessary, but not sufficient to define a crime as one necessarily involving moral turpitude; 2) for relatively minor crimes, mere evil intent may become too attenuated to define a crime in which moral turpitude necessarily inheres; 3) baseness and depravity, while not necessary, are always sufficient to define a crime as one involving moral turpitude, because implicit in such crimes is the necessary evil intent as well as sufficient moral obliquity contrary to accepted moral standards. 107 This taxonomy of moral turpitude accords with the substantial weight of authority defining the phrase crime involving moral turpitude in merely anecdotal fashion. Thus, under this taxonomy of moral turpitude, fraud crimes will always be crimes involving moral turpitude, Jordan, 341 U.S. at 232, 71 S.Ct. at 708-09; Izedonmwen, 37 F.3d at 417, because they have the requisite evil intent, in the form of intent to defraud, which is never too attenuated to remove the crime from the realm of crimes involving moral turpitude. Rape, and even statutory rape, which has no intent requirement, would be crimes involving moral turpitude under this classification system, because such crimes are base and depraved, and therefore manifestly involve[ ] moral turpitude. See, e.g., Marciano, 450 F.2d at 1025. Similarly, theft crimes would always be recognized as crimes involving moral turpitude, see, e.g., Dashto, 59 F.3d at 699; Soetarto, 516 F.2d at 780; Villa-Fabela, 882 F.2d at 440; Chiaramonte, 626 F.2d at 1097; Christianson, 226 F.2d at 655; Berlandi, 113 F.2d at 431, because the intent to deprive another of property is an evil intent implicit in such crimes. Voluntary homicide, defined as either murder or voluntary manslaughter, remains a crime involving moral turpitude, because it involves an evil intent, at the very least, if not baseness and depravity. See, e.g., Cabral, 15 F.3d at 195-96. 108 But what of criminally reckless conduct, such as reckless theft or involuntary manslaughter? As noted above, the vast majority of decisions find reckless or involuntary conduct does not fit the paradigm. However, we must be most concerned with cases that appear to depart from, not merely confirm, an anticipated result. Such cases require careful analysis to see if they fit the paradigm offered here after all. 109 One case at first blush appears to define reckless conduct as defining conduct imbuing a crime with the essential elements of moral turpitude. See People v. Campbell, 23 Cal.App.4th 1488, 28 Cal.Rptr.2d 716 (1994). In Campbell, however, the California Court of Appeals was determining whether a conviction for felony vandalism, which had a malice element, constituted a crime involving moral turpitude for purposes of impeachment of a witness. Campbell, 28 Cal.Rptr.2d at 719. The court observed that, under California law, a witness may be impeached for conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude, where such a crime is defined by an element of general readiness to do evil. Id. (citing People v. Castro, 38 Cal.3d 301, 211 Cal.Rptr. 719, 696 P.2d 111 (1985)). The court also noted the following: 110 It is generally held that [the term 'malice' in such statutes] calls for more than mere intentional harm without justification or excuse; there must be a wanton and wilful (or 'reckless') disregard of the plain dangers of harm, without justification, excuse or mitigation. ( [2 Witkin & Epstein, Cal.Criminal Law (2d ed. 1988) Crimes Against Property, Sec. 678,] p. 762.) Such a state of mind betokens that general readiness to do evil which constitutes moral turpitude. (See Castro, supra, 38 Cal.3d at 314, 211 Cal.Rptr. 719, 38 Cal.3d 301.) 111 Id. However, the California Court of Appeals specifically stated that immigration decisions, pressed by the defendant, did not apply the standards for a crime involving moral turpitude set forth in the Castro decision controlling on the state law question of impeachment of witnesses. Id. 28 Cal.Rptr.2d at 720. Furthermore, it is apparent from the quoted language that the recklessness in question in Campbell was disregard of the dangers of harm, without justification, excuse or mitigation, exceeding a mere intention to harm the victim. Id. 28 Cal.Rptr.2d at 719. Thus, there is already an intent to harm present in Campbell 's discussion of recklessness and moral turpitude; the recklessness involved is as to the dangers of the intended harm. Campbell therefore does not support the general proposition that recklessness can stand in for the evil intent element that is necessary for a crime to involve moral turpitude. 112 As a general matter, I find the California standard of readiness to do evil as defining a crime involving moral turpitude to be inadequate. To my mind, readiness to do evil does not necessarily imply intent to do evil. Readiness is a disposition, but intent is the formulation of a purpose. It is evil intent, not readiness to have such an intent, in which moral turpitude necessarily inheres. However, the Campbell court noted that its readiness to do evil standard differed from that applied to a determination of crimes involving moral turpitude for immigration purposes, and therefore that standard, with what I would consider an unreasonable extension of the meaning of crime involving moral turpitude, is simply inapplicable here. Finally, it is apparent that the Campbell court was actually looking at a mens rea that exceeded mere intent, not one that fell short of intent. Thus, the Campbell court may have been addressing a crime in which more than the necessary elements of a crime involving moral turpitude were necessarily present. 113 In an unpublished decision, Gutierrez-Chavez v. INS, 8 F.3d 26 (Table), 1993 WL 394916 (9th Cir.1993), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the BIA's order of deportation of an alien, denying the alien's request for voluntary departure, where the alien had been convicted of a crime with only a recklessness mens rea. Gutierrez-Chavez, 8 F.3d at 26 (Table), 1993 WL 394916, at  1. In Gutierrez-Chavez, the alien had been convicted of second degree theft under Alaska statutes, Alaska Stat. Secs. 11.46.130(a) & 11.46.190(a), which had as an element of the offense proof that the defendant acted recklessly. Id. The court reviewed de novo the question of law of whether a conviction in Alaska for theft in the second degree is a crime involving moral turpitude. Id. The court recognized both that it had held that moral turpitude is shown when evil motive or bad purpose is part of the crime, Id. (citing Tseung Chu, 247 F.2d at 934), and that  'theft[s] [are] crime[s] of moral turpitude.'  Id., 1993 WL 394916, at  2 (quoting Villa-Fabela, 882 F.2d at 440). However, the court recognized that it had not previously reached the question of whether a theft conviction under a statute requiring only proof of recklessness would suffice to constitute a crime involving moral turpitude. Id. 114 Searching for the defining characteristics of a crime involving moral turpitude, the court inquired whether the statute contains an element of guilty knowledge or evil intent. Id. (citing, inter alia, Wadman, 329 F.2d at 814.). Sifting through the applicable state statutes, the court found that second degree theft could include theft by receiving, and that theft by receiving was in turn defined as buying, receiving, retaining, concealing, or disposing of stolen property with reckless disregard that the property was stolen. Id., 1993 WL 394916, at  3 (citing Alaska Stat. Secs. 11.46.100(4) & 11.46.190(a)). Alaska law defined recklessness in terms similar to those used in the Missouri statute at issue here: 115 [A] person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a provision of law defining an offense when the person is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists; the risk must be of such a nature and degree that disregard of it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.... 116 Id. (quoting Alaska Stat. Sec. 11.81.900(a)(3)). 117 The court in Gutierrez-Chavez then performed the crucial step in the analysis by carefully analyzing interpretations of the statutes in question by the Alaska courts before concluding that Alaska courts have interpreted the theft by receiving statute to contain both an element of guilty knowledge and an implied element of intent to deprive the owner of property which has been stolen. Id. (citing Andrew v. State, 653 P.2d 1063, 1065 (Alaska Ct.App.1982)). The court concluded that [u]nder Alaska's interpretation of its theft by receiving statute, a conviction under the statute suffices to meet the requirements of a crime involving moral turpitude because guilty knowledge and evil intent are elements of the crime. Id. The court noted that this conclusion was in accord with the decisions in Matter of Wojtkow, 18 I. & N. Dec. 111 (BIA 1981), and Matter of Medina, 15 I. & N. Dec. 611 (BIA 1976), which had found similar statutory language defined a crime involving moral turpitude. Id., 1993 WL 394916, at  4. Thus, in Gutierrez-Chavez, the reviewing court looked to state case law to determine whether the statutory language actually defined a crime in which the essential elements of moral turpitude inhered, and found from those state court decisions that the statute did define a crime with those essential elements. 118 Guilty knowledge has been recognized as a minimum degree of culpability for a crime to involve moral turpitude. See, e.g., Lennon, 527 F.2d at 194; Wadman, 329 F.2d at 814. When the state's highest court interprets the elements of the crime as including guilty knowledge coupled with implied intent to do a wrong or evil act, as was the case in Gutierrez-Chavez, moral turpitude may well be present. See, e.g., Goldeshtein, 8 F.3d at 648 (crime that does not necessarily involve evil intent is not necessarily crime involving moral turpitude, citing Hirsch, 308 F.2d at 567). It was not mere recklessness that provided the necessary elements of guilty knowledge and implied intent to do evil under the Alaska statute, but reckless theft in which such elements were implicit. Theft, of course, is universally recognized as a crime involving moral turpitude. See, e.g., Dashto, 59 F.3d at 699. 119 However, other decisions determining that crimes involving only a recklessness mens rea were crimes involving moral turpitude fall far short of this careful search for the defining elements of a crime involving moral turpitude found in Campbell and Gutierrez-Chavez. The deficiencies in the analysis in Wojtkow and Medina have already been demonstrated above, beginning at page -45-. Neither of these cases looked beyond the statutory definition of the state crimes in question, thus pulling out of thin air the BIA's own interpretation of whether the state crime involved the essential elements of a crime involving moral turpitude. Thus, in Medina, the case upon which Wojtkow relies, the BIA glibly ignored a long string of precedent holding reckless or involuntary conduct not to involve moral turpitude, because of the lack of any intent, by remarking that willingness to commit the act in disregard of the perceived risk was sufficient. Medina, 15 I. & N. Dec. 611. However, recklessness, defined as conscious disregard, or willingness to commit the act, does not equal evil intent; otherwise, the law would not distinguish among culpable states of mind, separating intentional acts from the merely reckless, and meting out punishment accordingly. Nor is a conscious disregard of or gross deviation from a standard of care necessarily vile, base, or depraved, nor does it raise an inference of implicit evil intent. 120 Thus, nowhere do I find an adequately reasoned opinion holding that recklessness, defined by applicable state court decisions as lacking elements of intent or guilty knowledge, can be a crime involving moral turpitude. The BIA's decision below is not such a decision and does not rely on such decisions. To the extent that the BIA concluded that recklessness, defined only as a conscious disregard of harm to another, involved the essential characteristics of a crime involving moral turpitude, I find the BIA's inclusion of criminally reckless conduct within the ambit of the deportation statute, Sec. 241(a)(2)(A), 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1251(a)(2)(A), to be wholly unreasonable. 121