Opinion ID: 2832197
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Single Deletion Theory

Text: The Government’s final theory relies wholly on Swanger’s testimony. Swanger testified that he observed Katakis press the delete key after screening emails on Swanger’s Dell. The Government argued in closing that all the jury needed to find in order to convict Katakis was that he pressed the delete key, thereby moving the emails from the inbox on Swanger’s Dell to the deleted items folder. The evidence was sufficient for the Government to prove the fact underlying this legal theory; all the jury had to do was credit Swanger’s testimony. “It is well established that the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness may be UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS 21 sufficient to sustain a conviction.” United States v. Dodge, 538 F.2d 770, 783 (8th Cir. 1976). Further, the ten incriminating emails were discovered in the deleted items folder of Swanger’s Dell, raising at least a colorable inference that Katakis deleted them. The district court recognized that the evidence was sufficient to prove the fact that Katakis single deleted the emails. However, the district court held that single deletion was not sufficient to give rise to liability under §1519. We agree. The Government argues that moving the ten incriminating emails from the inbox to the deleted items folder was sufficient to “conceal” them within the meaning of § 1519. Once again, the Government is forced into this strained position by the collapse of its original theory at trial. We have been unable to locate any case law, and the Government provides none, providing a definition for concealment under § 1519. “Conceal” is not a term of art, and it is unambiguous, so we are obligated to give the term its plain meaning. See Williams v. Paramo, 775 F.3d 1182, 1188 (9th Cir. 2015) (“Because we assume that Congress means what it says in a statute, the ‘plain meaning of a statute controls where that meaning is unambiguous.’”) (quoting Khatib v. Cty. of Orange, 639 F.3d 898, 902 (9th Cir. 2011) (en banc)). “Conceal” means “to prevent disclosure or recognition of; avoid revelation of; refrain from revealing recognition of; draw attention from; treat so as to be unnoticed; to place out of sight; withdraw from being observed; shield from vision or notice.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1993). The Government would have us adopt a definition of “conceal” such that when a defendant removes something from its “ordinary place of storage” making the thing “more difficult to find,” he may be liable under § 1519. Indeed, the Government would define concealment as “anything that 22 UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS makes something harder for a casual onlooker to see, observe, or notice.” The Government places special emphasis on the fact that Katakis “dumped” the emails “in the digital equivalent of a trash receptacle.” The Government primarily relies on a Third Circuit case, United States v. Lessner, 498 F.3d 185 (3d Cir. 2007), to support its interpretation. In that case, federal agents arrived at Lessner’s place of work as part of their investigation and observed her placing an incriminating appointment book into a trash can. Id. at 191. Lessner also removed a stack of files from a locked filing cabinet and placed them on her desk. Id. Lessner then contacted other individuals involved in her scheme, and they destroyed the files. Id. On the basis of these acts, the government charged Lessner with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1519. The Third Circuit held that placing the incriminating appointment book in the trash can constituted only “an attempt to ‘conceal’ and ‘cover up’ a ‘record.’”6 Id. at 196 n.5. Therefore, Lessner does not support the Government’s position. Quite the opposite: removing the incriminating appointment book from the place it would normally be found and depositing it in a place that would have made it somewhat harder for investigating agents to find it was not sufficient to actually conceal the book. 6 The Third Circuit noted that “Lessner’s act of disposal—which seems clearly to be a form of ‘destruction’—falls within the proscriptions of the statute.” Lessner, 498 F.3d at 196 n.5. Given the language quoted above, we take the Third Circuit’s language to mean that, had the appointment book been taken out with the trash, then it would have eventually been destroyed. It is nonsensical that the Third Circuit could have meant that the incriminating appointment book could have been actually destroyed simply by placing it a trash can. UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS 23 The Government makes much of the fact that a jury could find that Katakis placed the emails into the deleted items folder, which the Government analogizes to a real world, physical trash can. But a deleted items folder in an email client is not like a trash can. Ordinarily, a trash can is eventually emptied into a larger receptacle, the trash is mingled with other garbage, and the garbage is then either destroyed or placed in a location in which it is extremely difficult to find any particular item. On Katakis’s computer, in contrast, an email placed in the deleted items folder remained in that folder unless a user took further action. As Katakis persuasively argues, all that he accomplished by single deleting the emails was moving them from one folder to another. In essence, Katakis placed the ten incriminating emails into an email folder that is by default not displayed to the user. But the first place that any competent investigator would look for emails that are not in the inbox is in the deleted items folder. This degree of concealment is not sufficient to satisfy § 1519. In making this determination, we are cognizant of the Government’s objection that focusing the inquiry too heavily on the potential actions of the investigator may create a “Catch-22.” It cannot be the case that, in order to prove concealment, the item being concealed must never be found. However, there must be more than the de minimis standard the Government urges. The Government’s approach would all but eliminate the act requirement from the statute: so much as taking an incriminating document from the surface of a desk and placing it in a drawer, or putting another folder on top of it, would expose a defendant to a twenty-year prison sentence, so long as the defendant acted with even the faintest hope that investigators might overlook the document. That glimmer of intent is all that the Government would require 24 UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS before subjecting a defendant to felony liability. We cannot endorse the Government’s proposed “casual onlooker” test. Intent for an item not to be found is inherent in the act of concealment. If that intent is satisfied, there is almost no act with respect to a document that would not be criminal under the Government’s proposed test. In this case, we need not set out a comprehensive standard for what it means to “conceal” a record under § 1519. Suffice to say, contrary to the Government’s position, we cannot ignore entirely the effort that an investigator would have to expend to uncover a hidden document. In this case, removing an email from one file folder and placing it in another was not sufficient to actually conceal it. Under the Government’s theory, a defendant would have concealed a document even by lifting it from the surface of his desk with the intent to place it somewhere else, because the defendant would have removed the document from where investigators (or not even an investigator, a casual onlooker) expected to find it. The Government must show actual obstruction. It cannot show that here, where it seized all three computers and the email server in the course of its investigation and would have discovered all single deleted emails within due course. Indeed, the Government is in essence arguing that it need not undertake any investigation at all: if things are not as the Government expects to find them, a defendant may be exposed to a term of twenty years’ imprisonment. More is needed, there must be some likelihood that the item will not be found in the course of a cursory examination (without using forensic tools) of a defendant’s computer. We emphasize the limited nature of this holding. Our conclusion that the evidence was insufficient to convict Katakis for single deleting emails rests upon the unique UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS 25 factual circumstance that pressing the delete key in this context serves only to move an email from one file folder to another. Section 1519 was drafted to prevent corporate document shredding. The digital context threatens to expand § 1519 and its potentially harsh punishment well beyond its intended reach. We are hesitant to expand the reach of § 1519, in part because the Government barely developed the facts necessary to support the single-deletion theory at trial and we are left without many of the facts that might prove actual concealment. As with the other theories raised on appeal, the single-deletion theory was an afterthought, a comment the Government made at closing and now urges was sufficient to warrant a potential twenty-year sentence. Accordingly, we cannot endorse the Government’s reading of the statute. Actual concealment must do more than merely inconvenience a reasonable investigator—there must be some likelihood that the item will not be found. That low bar is not met in this case.