Page:Pugin v. Garland.pdf/23

Rh proceeding as the Court does, by looking to dictionary definitions, chapter 73 of the Federal Criminal Code, state statutes, and the Model Penal Code, the same result emerges: Core obstruction of justice requires a pending investigation or proceeding.

Begin with the central dictionary definition upon which the Court relies. It defines obstruction of justice as “the crime or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice and law esp. by influencing, threatening, harming, or impeding a witness, potential witness, juror, or judicial or legal officer or by furnishing false information in or otherwise impeding an investigation or legal process.” Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law 337 (1996) (emphasis added).

While the Court claims that this definition omits any requirement of a pending investigation or proceeding,, the two italicized phrases say otherwise. “[I]nterference” means the “act of meddling in or hampering an activity or process,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1178 (1993), while “impede” means “to interfere with or get in the way of the progress of” something or someone, id., at 1132. The definition is clear that the process that is meddled in, or interfered with, is the “process of justice and law” or “an investigation or legal process.”

For the same reason, the majority is too hasty when it asserts that the definition encompasses acts separate from a pending investigation or proceeding. That definition ends with the phrase “in … an investigation or legal process.”