Opinion ID: 1354200
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Lopez-Meza's departure from the BIA's regulatory offense precedents

Text: Lopez-Meza acknowledges that there exists a general rule that regulatory offenses do not constitute CIMTs. Lopez-Meza, 22 I. & N. Dec. at 1193. But it departs from this rule, reasoning that an individual who drives under the influence in violation of . . . [A.R.S.] section 28-1383(A)(1) does so with the knowledge that he or she should not be driving under any circumstances. We find that a person who drives while under the influence, knowing that he or she is absolutely prohibited from driving, commits a crime so base and so contrary to the currently accepted duties that persons owe to one another and to society in general that it involves moral turpitude. Id. at 1195-96. This purported explanation is a non-explanation  an ipse dixit or because I said so edict. One can, perhaps, read into the BIA's non-explanation the implication that certain offenses are so base, vile, or depraved that an evil intent, even if not an explicit requirement for conviction under the statute, is inherent in the act. But the BIA has never given any particularized content to the phrase base, vile, or depraved other than to hold that some offenses are and others are not. This is why, as the majority explains, we do not defer to the BIA's use of general descriptive phrases like base, vile, or depraved, [and] contrary to . . . the duties owed between man and man  because deferring to a contentless phrase would ha[ve] no practical significance. See Maj. Op. at 909-10 (quoting Galeana-Mendoza, 465 F.3d at 1058 n. 9). Similarly, Lopez-Meza 's purported explanation provides no way to figure out when (or by what logic) an offense is sufficiently base, vile, and depraved that evil intent is implicit in the act. [21] What we do know is that the BIA and this Court have in practice limited the concept of implicitly evil intent to fraud, [22] sex offenses, [23] and drug trafficking offenses. [24] Lopez-Meza provides no reasons why a regulatory DUI offense belongs in the same camp. Indeed, to the extent Lopez-Meza can be read to hold that drunk driving on a suspended license is so base, vile, or depraved that evil intent is somehow inherent in the act, I can find no reasons in the BIA's precedential CIMT cases  or in logic  why that should be so. Certainly, where a nonfraud offense is purely regulatory, it cannot inherently exhibit an evil intent. After all, that is the very definition of a crime that is malum prohibitum: But for the statutory prohibition, the act would not be wrongful. [25] If any aspect of Campos's conduct could be characterized as morally wrongful, it would be driving while intoxicated  not driving on a suspended license. But the BIA has unequivocally acknowledged that driving while intoxicated is not turpitudinous, see Lopez-Meza, 22 I. & N. Dec. at 1194, [26] and so, necessarily, does not inherently demonstrate an evil state of mind. In fact, the BIA has held that even a third conviction for drunk driving  another variety of aggravated DUI under the same Arizona statute at issue here  is not a CIMT. Matter of Torres-Varela, 23 I. & N. Dec. 78 (B.I.A.2001) (en banc). [27] As Judge Nelson cogently argued in her dissent from the panel decision in this case, it is patently unreasonable to conclude that driving under the influence only once, even with a suspended license, somehow carries with it greater moral opprobrium than driving drunk repeatedly. Marmolejo-Campos v. Gonzales, 503 F.3d 922, 929 (9th Cir.2007) (D. Nelson, J., dissenting). Lopez-Meza 's implicit suggestion that the lack of a valid license converts a simple DUI offense, which does not inherently involve an evil intent, into a CIMT that does necessarily involve an evil intent, is simply incoherent. The BIA has identified no basis whatever for treating this variety of aggravated DUI under A.R.S. § 28-1383(A)(1) differently from other regulatory offenses which have been designated as nonturpitudinous. Because I said so is not good enough.