Court Opinion

ID: 9628902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:33:47.695387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:22.298311
License: Public Domain

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part. I join the majority’s holding that the district court erred in granting the government’s motion to exclude Ali’s “mistake of law” defense. I disagree, however, with the majority’s holding affirming the district court’s denial of Ali’s motion to dismiss the indictment.
It is undisputed that Ali’s attempted second marriage was void ab initio under state law and therefore without any legal effect. See Blaox’s Law DictionaRY (8th ed.2004) (definition of “void marriage”) (“A void marriage does not exist, has never existed, and needs no formal act to be dissolved.”); see also id. (definition of “marriage”) (“The essentials of a valid marriage are (1) parties legally capable of contracting to marry, (2) mutual consent or agreement, and (3) an actual contracting in the form prescribed by law.” (emphasis added)); Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/married (last visit*728ed Oct. 28, 2008) (defining “married” as “being in the state of matrimony”). As a legal matter, therefore, Ali was never “married” to more than one person at the same time. Rather, he attempted a second marriage, but that attempt failed because of M’s married status. Consequently, M’s answer of “no” to the question on the citizenship application whether he had “ever ... been married to more than one person at the same time” was true as a matter of law.
The majority avoids this result by ignoring the plain meaning of “married” and purporting to divine the intent of immigration authorities in posing this question on the citizenship application. According to the majority, a person is “married” for purposes of this question “if he participated in a marriage ceremony while still married to another.” Maj. Op. at 724-25. The majority posits that both laypersons and legal experts would “understand that the purpose of such a question in the ‘moral character’ section of a citizenship application is to assess whether the applicant has ever committed bigamy.” Maj. Op. at 720. However, nothing in the record reveals the purpose of immigration authorities in posing this question to citizenship applicants or that any particular purpose was communicated to M. If in fact the question was intended to discover whether an applicant had committed acts constituting state-law bigamy, the drafters of the question could have asked whether the applicant had ever engaged in a wedding ceremony or otherwise attempted a second marriage while still married to another. At the very least, the question, as drafted, is ambiguous. Because applicants such as M face possible criminal sanctions in this context, immigration authorities should bear the burden of drafting clear and unambiguous questions before applicants may be penalized for making false statements on citizenship applications.
The majority also makes a misguided attempt to analogize the false-statements offense with which M was charged with the very different state-law offense of bigamy. The majority warns that “were [we] to adopt [M’s] reasoning and dismiss the indictment, it would nullify all criminal bigamy laws by giving a defendant charged with bigamy a foolproof defense — that he could not have, as a matter of law, committed bigamy because his attempted second marriage was automatically void.” Maj. Op. at 720. But the warning is alarmist; it is already well established in state courts that the offense of bigamy is completed when a person, while legally married to another, attempts to enter a second marriage and, to that end, goes through a marriage ceremony. See State v. Fitzgerald, 240 Kan. 187, 726 P.2d 1344, 1346 (1986) (“[I]t is the appearing to contract a second marriage and going through the ceremony which constitutes the crime of bigamy .... ” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Allen v. State, 17 Ga.App. 431, 87 S.E. 681, 682 (1916) (“It is now held by all the courts that the word ‘marries,’ when applied to a subsequent marriage, means going through a form of marriage.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Further, the bigamy case law makes clear that an individual may be convicted of bigamy notwithstanding the fact that the attempted second marriage is void ab initio under state law. See, e.g., 11 Am.Jur.2d Bigamy § 9 (“[I]t is the appearing to contract a second marriage and the going through the ceremony that constitutes the crime of bigamy; otherwise, it never could exist in ordinary cases, since a previous marriage always renders null and void a marriage that is celebrated afterward by either of the parties during the lifetime of the other.”); see also Stevens v. State, 156 Tex.Crim. 431, 243 S.W.2d 162, 163 (1951) (quoting identical language in former ver*729sion of Am.Jur.); State v. Eden, 350 Mo. 932, 169 S.W.2d 342, 345 (1943) (same). The issues presented in this case, therefore, have no possible bearing on the well-settled doctrines that govern the nature of the offense of bigamy and the defenses available to defendants in that context.
Because it is undisputed that Ali was never legally “married” to two people at the same time, his answer of “no” to the question whether he had “ever ... been married to more than one person at the same time” was true as a matter of law. Accordingly, I would reverse the district court’s denial of Ali’s motion to dismiss the indictment.