Court Opinion

ID: 9497481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:52:15.021786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:13.087502
License: Public Domain

GUY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The Carneys falsified paperwork in connection with their sales of firearms to a *454convicted felon. They were not convicted of falsifying paperwork in connection with their sales of firearms, however; they were convicted of (1) aiding-and-abetting the buyer’s falsification of paperwork; and (2) failing to complete the required paperwork.
In a purely literal sense, the Carneys could be said to have aided and abetted the buyer’s falsification of the records. But under this view, virtually every instance in which a licensed gun-seller knowingly fudges his records to facilitate an otherwise illegal sale, a (misdemeanor) violation of § 924(c), will also constitute aiding or abetting a non-seller in doing so, a (felony) violation of § 924(a). The only situation in which § 924(c) is not superfluous is when the seller sua sponte falsifies the record, with no input from the buyer. This is likely to be an infinitesimal subset of cases, given that the record-keeping requirements function mainly to limit the universe of gun purchasers, and that gun dealers have little reason to fabricate the identity of their buyers unless their buyers want or need their identities fabricated. Thus, under the majority’s reading, § 924(c) would become practically superfluous. However, “[i]t is a cardinal principle of statutory construction that a statute ought, upon the whole, to be so construed that, if it can be prevented, no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant.” TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U.S. 19, 31, 122 S.Ct. 441, 151 L.Ed.2d 339 (2001) (citation and quotations omitted).
The Government’s response, seemingly adopted by the majority, is that the duplicate provisions merely allow the Government to choose between charging the dealer with a felony or charging the dealer with a misdemeanor. This explanation— articulated by the Eighth Circuit in Al-Muqsit — falls flat on two levels. The court in Al-Muqsit surmised that Congress “allow[ed] for the option of misdemeanor prosecution for licensed dealers who make false statements on ATF forms, while leaving intact the felony prosecution structure for those ... whose flagrant and repeated actions in accepting false ATF forms from straw purchasers ... warrants felony punishment.” Al-Muqsit, 191 F.3d at 935. But the aim of Congress — to treat knowing violations more seriously than unintentional violations — was accomplished by the statute’s elimination of strict liability; a requirement that the falsification occur “knowingly” is now a component of both the felony and misdemeanor provisions. An “innocent” dealer could not be convicted even under § 924(c), because that dealer’s transcription error or honest mistake would not have been made “knowingly.” The elimination of liability for innocent, careless or negligent mistakes also eliminates any reason that Congress might have allowed the Government to “choose” between felony and misdemeanor liability for identical conduct.
Even if Congress wanted to punish certain types of “knowing” falsification by federally licensed dealers more severely than other types of “knowing” falsification by federally licensed dealers, the aiding or abetting mechanism would have been an extremely awkward and indirect means of doing so. Congress could have written: “Any federally licensed dealer who knowingly falsifies a record in connection with the sale of a firearm may be prosecuted for either a felony or a misdemeanor.” Instead, under the majority’s reading, “the direct method [of liability] would call for a misdemeanor, while the indirect method [of liability] would call for a felony.” Wegg, 919 F.Supp. at 906. In other words, the majority’s interpretation presumes that Congress tried to do indirectly what it could easily have done directly. The Supreme Court, however, has repeatedly refused “to assume that Congress chose a *455surprisingly indirect route to convey an important and easily expressed message.” Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 262, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1994). See also Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207, 226, 105 S.Ct. 3127, 87 L.Ed.2d 152 (1985) (“The Government ... presumes congressional adoption of an indirect but blunderbuss solution to a problem treated with precision when considered directly.”).
The third and final strike against the majority’s reading of the statute is the well-established common-law exception to aider-or-abettor liability, which is routinely applied to crimes in which, for lack of a better description, it takes two to tango. As the Model Penal Code explains, accomplice liability does not extend to conduct that is “inevitably incident” to the main offense. Thus, someone who merely buys heroin for personal use cannot be charged with aiding or abetting the distribution of heroin; a fourteen-year old who consents to sex with a forty-year old cannot be charged with aiding or abetting statutory rape; and a prostitute who sells her services to a client cannot be charged with aiding or abetting the solicitation of prostitution. In our case, § 924(a) and § 924(c) deal almost inevitably with two sides of the same coin: a seller knowingly accepts falsified paperwork from a buyer who knowingly falsifies the paperwork. To punish the former for aiding or abetting the latter is redundant.
Indeed, the federal courts have routinely imbued federal criminal statutes with this common-law exception to accomplice liability; were the majority to do so here, it would have no choice but to conclude that the Carneys were prosecuted under the wrong provision. In Gebardi v. United States, 287 U.S. 112, 53 S.Ct. 35, 77 L.Ed. 206 (1932), the Supreme Court interpreted the scope of the Mann Act, which outlawed the transportation of a woman across state lines for “immoral purposes.” The statute itself did not explicitly provide for punishing the woman who was being transported, but in Gebardi the woman was convicted under an aiding-or-abetting theory. The Supreme Court reversed her conviction, stating that:
It is not to be supposed that the consent of an unmarried person to adultery with a married person, where the latter alone is guilty of the substantive offense, would render the former an abettor or a conspirator, or that the acquiescence of a woman under the age of consent would make her a co-conspirator with the man to commit statutory rape upon herself. The principle, determinative of this case, is the same.
Id. at 123, 53 S.Ct. 35 (internal citations omitted). Similarly, in United States v. Amen, 831 F.2d 373, 381-82 (2d Cir.1987), the Second Circuit held that a statute that applied to so-called “kingpins” did not contemplate the extension of aiding-or-abetting liability to accessories: to apply accessory liability to the kingpin statute would defeat the purpose of treating kingpins more harshly than their subordinates. The same holds true in our case. Congress treated customers more harshly than licensed dealers; to treat licensed dealers as accessories to the customers undermines Congress’s intent.
The majority’s interpretation of § 922(b)(5) not only suffers from the same problems as its interpretation of § 924, but also is at odds with our decision in United States v. Choice, 201 F.3d 837 (6th Cir. 2000). The Carneys’ argument is fairly straightforward: the evidence showed that they falsely filled out records, not that they failed to fill out any records at all. The Government argues, however, that the statute “is also violated when a dealer wilfully fails to record the name, age, and *456address of the true purchaser, instead inserting the name, age, and address of a straw purchaser.”
Again, the Government’s reading would subject virtually all licensed dealers who file false records to dual liability, rendering § 922(b)(5) duplicative. And in Choice, 201 F.3d at 840, when rejecting a challenge to a conviction under the felony provision of § 922(b)(5), with the dealer arguing that § 924(a) subjected him only to misdemean- or liability, we drew an explicit distinction between submitting false records and keeping no records, noting that Congress “punish[ed] licensed dealers who knowingly falsify records less harshly than dealers who willfully fail to keep any records at all.” Id. at 840. This language in Choice was not, as the majority contends, “mere noncontrolling dictum.” (Majority at * *) Rather, if the Government’s reading of the statute were correct — that the falsification of records inevitably also resulted in distinct liability for the attendant failure to record the true information' — then the basis for our holding in Choice would be undermined.
In both of its holdings, the majority has embraced statutory interpretations that assume that Congress not only created multiple liability for the same conduct in virtually all cases, but also that it did so in an indirect fashion when a more direct means was available to it. I would give the statutes their natural reading, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that Congress wanted federally licensed dealers who falsified paperwork to be charged only as federally licensed dealers who falsified paperwork. I therefore would reverse the convictions.
For the preceding reasons, I respectfully dissent.