Opinion ID: 599121
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Willful Structuring: One Word, One Meaning.

Text: 29 Section 5322 provides criminal sanctions for both CTR and structuring offenses. As we determine the mens rea requirement for the latter group of crimes, it is axiomatic that the plain words and structure of the statute must be paramount. See, e.g., Pennsylvania Dep't of Pub. Welfare v. Davenport, 495 U.S. 552, 557-58, 110 S.Ct. 2126, 2130-31, 109 L.Ed.2d 588 (1990); Stowell v. Ives, 976 F.2d 65, 69 (1st Cir.1992). Ordinarily, identical terms within an Act bear the same meaning. Estate of Cowart v. Nicklos Drilling Co., --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 2589, 2596, 120 L.Ed.2d 379 (1992); accord Sullivan v. Stroop, 496 U.S. 478, 484, 110 S.Ct. 2499, 2506, 110 L.Ed.2d 438 (1990). In the case at hand, the Cowart presumption is particularly strong. We explain briefly. 30 While courts have found on infrequent occasion that Congress intended a word to have different connotations when used in different provisions of the same Act, see, e.g., Greenwood Trust Co. v. Massachusetts, 971 F.2d 818, 830 n. 10 (1st Cir.1992), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 974, 122 L.Ed.2d 129 (1993); New Eng. Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Public Utils. Comm'n, 742 F.2d 1, 8 (1st Cir.1984), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1174, 106 S.Ct. 2902, 90 L.Ed.2d 988 (1986), those instances almost always involve, at a bare minimum, multiple uses of a term or phrase within a panoramic statutory scheme. Here, however, we are not dealing with repetitions of a word at diverse points in a statute, but with a single word in a single statutory section. Ascribing various meanings to a single iteration of a single word--reading the word differently for each code section to which it applies--would open Pandora's jar. If courts can render meaning so malleable, the usefulness of a single penalty provision for a group of related code sections will be eviscerated and, by extension, almost any code section that references a group of other code sections would become susceptible to individuated interpretation. 31 Furthermore, if Congress wanted the purposive mens rea in the antistructuring statute to stand alone, it had several simple options. It could, for example, have placed the antistructuring provision somewhere other than in Subchapter II, or amended the criminal sanctions provision to except structuring violations. 7 It exercised none of the available options. Thus, absent powerful evidence to the contrary, we believe courts should presume that Congress intended the mens rea set by section 5322 to apply in equal measure to both CTR violations and structuring offenses. 32 We recognize, of course, that notwithstanding these problems, several other courts have scuttled the Cowart presumption and read the word willfully in section 5322 differently as it applies to breaches of different currency regulations. Compare, e.g., Brown, 954 F.2d at 1568 (ruling that knowledge of the antistructuring law was not required to ground a structuring conviction) and Scanio, 900 F.2d at 490 (same) with, e.g., United States v. Eisenstein, 731 F.2d 1540, 1543 (11th Cir.1984) (upholding mistake-of-law defense for currency import and export violations) and United States v. Dichne, 612 F.2d 632, 636 (2d Cir.1979) (similar), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 928, 100 S.Ct. 1314, 63 L.Ed.2d 760 (1980). See also Dashney, 937 F.2d at 539-40 (declaring mistake of law to be a defense in respect to violations of currency import and export regulations but not in respect to structuring offenses). To warrant redefining willfully from crime to crime within the same statute, these courts generally attempt to distinguish antistructuring regulations from, say, currency importing regulations, on the basis of the reasonable probability that knowledge [of the law] might be obtained more easily in the former situation than in the latter. Scanio, 900 F.2d at 490 (citation omitted). 33 We must respectfully disagree with these courts. The distinction that they draw simply does not justify the transmogrification of the word willfully into a statutory chameleon. We are, moreover, particularly chary about adopting so pleochroic an approach in light of the more consistent, less complicated alternative offered in Bank of New England, 821 F.2d at 856. That alternative, which derives great vitality from the Supreme Court's language, see McLaughlin, 486 U.S. at 133, 108 S.Ct. at 1681; Trans World Airlines, 469 U.S. at 126, 105 S.Ct. at 624, provides a fair, workable, mistake-of-law defense to those accused of currency-related crimes and at the same time ensures that defendants who know of the law's requirements in a general sense, but recklessly or intentionally fail to investigate the legality of structuring or other proscribed activity, will be found guilty. 34 We hold, therefore, that the plain language of section 5322 governs; that the unitary willfulness standard of section 5322 should be given an identical meaning with respect to structuring and CTR violations; 8 and that, therefore, an unintentional, nonreckless mistake of law is a complete defense to a structuring charge. 35