Opinion ID: 756452
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: United States v. Smith

Text: 148 and United States v. Kahn 149 In Smith, the court stated:Because the wording of § 1623(d) is plain, simple, and straightforward, the words must be accorded their normal meanings. The ordinary usage of the word or is disjunctive, indicating an alternative. Construing the word 'or' to mean and is conjunctive, and is clearly in contravention of its ordinary usage. Thus, we find the plain language of § 1623(d) controlling and accord the word 'or' its ordinary, disjunctive meaning. 150 35 F.3d at 346 (citing United States v. Jones, 811 F.2d 444, 447 (8th Cir.1987)) (internal quotation marks omitted). The court concluded that reading the statute in the disjunctive was consistent with the intent of Congress, because it both provided a strong incentive to provide truthful testimony in the first instance and to correct false testimony after it is given. 151 Reading the two conditions in the alternative, as the word or demands, the statute creates an incentive for witnesses to correct false testimony early in the proceeding. Arguably, construing the word or to mean and creates a statutory scheme providing a stronger incentive for witnesses to testify truthfully at the outset; however, we defer to Congress's chosen scheme as manifested by its language which balances encouragement of truthful testimony and penalties for perjury. 152 Id. However, as noted above, reading the statute in the disjunctive actually provides an incentive for perjury, and even the Smith court recognized that such a result would be contrary to the intent of the statute. Moreover, the court in Smith did not address the obvious contradiction between the disjunctive in § 1623(d) and the conjunctive in the law it is based upon. 153 Had so drastic a departure from the New York statute as a switch from combination to alternative satisfaction of its carefully developed preconditions been really intended, we believe Congress would have said so.... Had Congress, after making crystal clear its purpose to promote truth telling to the hilt, intended the almost wide-open door to prevarication that disjunctive construction of the statutory preconditions would furnish, it hardly would have failed to elucidate its logic. 154 Moore, at 1042-43. 155 In Kahn, the defendant also challenged his conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1621, and asserted several reasons why he should have been charged under § 1623 instead. The government's position there was similar to the position adopted here, and included an assertion that the prosecution had absolute discretion to decide upon which statute to base a conviction. The court rejected that argument out of hand. 156 While perhaps Congress constitutionally could have placed such wide discretion in the prosecutor, we find no clear intention that it meant to do so here. And, we find not a little disturbing the prospect of the government employing § 1621 whenever a recantation exists, and § 1623 when one does not, simply to place perjury defendants in the most disadvantageous trial position. 157 472 F.2d at 282. However, the court did not rule on that argument because the defendant had been afforded all of the protection that he would have been entitled to under § 1623. Id. at 283. (we need not reach the merits of the government's position [here] ... assuming arguendo that the indictment named the wrong statute, there was no prejudice to Kahn. The substantive elements ... are the same under either statute, and the trial court applied the 'two-witness' rule). 9 Since the court did not address the merits, the holding in Kahn is not as supportive of Sherman's position as the district court assumed. Moreover, to the extent that the analysis in Kahn does support Sherman's position, we are not persuaded by it. 10 158 Rather, we agree with the analysis in United States v. Moore. The discussion there is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of 18 U.S.C. § 1623(d) that has been conducted by a circuit court of appeals. There, the court stated that despite the commonly understood meaning of or, the legislative history of § 1623 required that courts imbue the word or with the meaning of and. Moore, 613 F.2d at 1040. We agree. 159 Only if both statutory conditions exist at the time of recantation will Congress' dual purpose of deterring perjury through more effective prosecutions and encouraging truthful testimony be furthered. Congress clearly did not intend to remove the twin impediments of the two-witness rule and the burden of proving which of two conflicting statements was actually false only to replace them with a get out of jail free card. Accordingly, we conclude that Congress intended to limit the defense of recantation in 18 U.S.C. § 1623(d) only to those instances where the perjurer recants before the declaration has not substantially affected the proceeding, and it has not become manifest that such falsity has been or will be exposed. 160 Here, that did not happen. Sherman's revelation came too late to allow him to rely upon it to defend himself from prosecution under the general perjury statute. Accordingly, we must reject his argument that the prosecutor's decision to charge him under 18 U.S.C. § 1621 rather than 18 U.S.C. § 1623 deprived him of a defense in violation of his right to due process of the law. 161 The reasoning in Moore, which we today adopt, is consistent with the decisions of the vast majority of courts of appeals that have addressed the overlap of these two statutes. In United States v. Scivola, 766 F.2d 37, 45 (1st Cir.1985), the court stated that 162 [section 1623] lists two temporal requirements that must be satisfied in order for a recanting witness to avoid prosecution for perjury: (1) the recantation must be made before the prior false testimony has substantially affected the relevant proceeding, and (2) it must be made before it has become manifest that the falsity of the prior testimony has been or will be exposed. 163 Similarly, in United States v. Fornaro, 894 F.2d 508, 510 (2d Cir.1990), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stated that [w]e agree ... that the more plausible interpretation of the section makes fulfillment of both conditions necessary for recantation to bar prosecution for perjury. Finally, in United States v. Scrimgeour, 636 F.2d 1019, 1024 (5th Cir.1981), the court opined that [t]he conjunctive reading of Section 1623(d) comports with accepted principles of statutory construction and is supported by the underlying congressional intent. 164 Here, Sherman answered yes when defense counsel began his impeachment of Sherman by asking: [y]ou know where I am going with this don't you? It is difficult to imagine a scenario that more clearly demonstrates why Congress could not have intended § 1623(d) to be read in the disjunctive. 165 If the two preconditions which Section 1623(d) specifies are alternative in nature, a perjurer can avoid prosecution by the simple expedient of recanting before his perjury adversely affects the proceeding, even after his misdeed has been laid bare; if, however, both preconditions must exist before recantation aborts the prosecution, there is much less tug-of-war within Congress' dual methodology for veracity-promotion. 166 Moore, 613 F.2d at 1041. 167 In interpreting 18 U.S.C. § 1623(d), it may appear that there is tension between the language of the statute and the canons of statutory construction. However, [t]he strict-construction rule governing interpretation of criminal statute is not [ ] to be woodenly applied. Strict construction cannot provide a substitute for common sense, precedent and legislative history ... Moore, 613 F.2d at 1044 (quoting United States v. Standard Oil Co., 384 U.S. 224, 225, 86 S.Ct. 1427, 16 L.Ed.2d 492 (1966)). Our prior decision in Lardieri affords us the benefit of the legislative history, and that history along with the judicial and statutory antecedents of 18 U.S.C. § 1623(d) leave no doubt as to the congressional intent in enacting that statute.