United States v. Di Pietro

615 F.3d 1369, 2010 WL 3365912
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedAugust 27, 2010
DocketNo. 09-13726
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 615 F.3d 1369 (United States v. Di Pietro) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Di Pietro, 615 F.3d 1369, 2010 WL 3365912 (11th Cir. 2010).

Opinion

MARTIN, Circuit Judge:

Linsy Di Pietro owned and operated A-3 Services, Inc., which arranged marriages in Florida between illegal aliens and United States citizens solely for the purpose of helping those aliens obtain permanent legal status. After a bench trial, Ms. Di Pietro was convicted of aiding and abetting four individuals in their violations of 8 U.S.C. § 1325(c), which imposes criminal liability on any individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading federal immigration laws.

This case requires us to address de novo two constitutional challenges to § 1325(c) in evaluating whether the district court properly denied Ms. Di Pietro’s motion to dismiss her indictment.1 Specifically, Ms. Di Pietro argues that § 1325(c) is so vague that it violates the Due Process [1371]*1371Clause of the Fifth Amendment. She also contends that the statute unconstitutionally preempts Florida’s marriage laws, which purportedly recognize the validity of marriages entered into for any purpose. After thorough review and oral argument, we agree with the district court that Ms. Di Pietro’s constitutional challenges do not pass muster. We therefore affirm the district court’s ruling and sustain her conviction under the statute.

I.

To satisfy due process concerns, Congress must ensure that a criminal law not only “provide[s] the kind of notice that will enable ordinary people to understand what conduct it prohibits” but also that it does not authorize or “even encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 56, 119 S.Ct. 1849, 1859, 144 L.Ed.2d 67 (1999) (citing Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 1858, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983)). A criminal defendant who finds herself within the indeterminate scope of a law that falls below these standards may seek to challenge that law as unconstitutionally vague, either on its face or as applied to her own individual facts and circumstances.

Ms. Di Pietro challenges § 1325(c) as being void for vagueness. The statute provides that “[a]ny individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws shall be [subject to imprisonment, a fine, or both].” 8 U.S.C. § 1325(c). Ms. Di Pietro concedes that § 1325(c) clearly proscribes the conduct in which she engaged and thus the statute is not unconstitutional as applied to her. She only challenges the law on its face, attacking the very validity of the statute itself.

In making this challenge, Ms. Di Pietro urges us to evaluate her claim using a more stringent vagueness standard than usual because she says that § 1325(c) implicates the right to marry, a form of association she says is protected by the First Amendment. Although the Supreme Court has indeed applied a more exacting vagueness review when constitutional rights are implicated,2 this case does not require us to grapple with the alleged impact of § 1325(c) on the First Amendment or to determine the contours of a heightened vagueness standard applicable to criminal statutes implicating First Amendment liberties. Rather, Ms. Di Pietro’s challenge may be resolved by a straightforward application of a well-established rule of constitutional law.

That rule provides that a party “to whom application of a statute is constitutional will not be heard to attack the statute on the ground that impliedly it might also be taken as applying to other persons or other situations in which its application might be unconstitutional.” United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 22, 80 S.Ct. 519, 523, 4 L.Ed.2d 524 (1960). The rule devel[1372]*1372oped from the recognition that constitutional rights are personal in nature; that prudential concerns counsel for limiting the scope of constitutional adjudications; and that Article III of the Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to actual cases and controversies. New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 767-68 & n. 20, 102 S.Ct. 3348, 3360 & n. 20, 73 L.Ed.2d 1113 (1982). The rule thus protects not only against “unnecessary pronouncement on constitutional issues” but also against “premature interpretations of statutes in areas where their constitutional application might be cloudy.” Raines, 362 U.S. at 21, 80 S.Ct. at 522. It also precludes a party from litigating the personal constitutional rights of others and avoids an undesirable foray by federal courts into “‘every conceivable situation which might possibly arise in the application of complex and comprehensive legislation.’” Id. (quoting Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 256, 73 S.Ct. 1031, 1035, 97 L.Ed. 1586 (1953)). Furthermore, it ensures that federal courts make informed judgments by limiting their decisions to actual, not hypothetical, cases that carry with them facts and data on which a well-reasoned decision may be based. See Ferber, 458 U.S. at 768, 102 S.Ct. at 3360; see also Raines, 362 U.S. at 22, 80 S.Ct. at 523.

In articulating this general rule in the context of void-for-vagueness challenges under the Due Process Clause, the Supreme Court has stated that “[a] plaintiff who engages in some conduct that is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the vagueness of the law as applied to the conduct of others.” Vill. of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 495, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 1191, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982). Recently, the Court clarified that the rule makes no exception for vagueness challenges that implicate the First Amendment. See Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, — U.S. —, 130 S.Ct. 2705, 2718-19, 177 L.Ed.2d 355 (2010). This clarification addressed a tendency of courts to analyze such vagueness challenges together with First Amendment overbreadth challenges,3 which are exempted from the rule. Unlike void-for-vagueness challenges, overbreadth challenges fall into one of the few exceptions to the rule that confines an individual to addressing her own harm, and its exemption is justified by a “weighty countervailing polic[y]”: that is, “ ‘persons whose expression is constitutionally protected may well refrain from exercising their rights for fear of criminal sanctions by a statute susceptible of application to protected expression.’ ” Ferber, 458 U.S. at 768, 102 S.Ct. at 3360-61 (quoting Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518, 521, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 1105, 31 L.Ed.2d 408 (1972)). For this reason, a party to whom the law may be constitutionally applied may assert an overbreadth challenge to a law on the ground that it violates the First Amendment rights of others. See, e.g., Humanitarian Law Project, 130 S.Ct. at 2719; United States v. Stevens, — U.S. —, 130 S.Ct. 1577, 1593, 176 L.Ed.2d 435 (2010) (Alito, J, dissenting); United States v. Williams,

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. Jordan Leahy
Eleventh Circuit, 2025
United States v. Jordan Jysae Pulido
133 F.4th 1256 (Eleventh Circuit, 2025)
United States v. Tia Deyon Pugh
90 F.4th 1318 (Eleventh Circuit, 2024)
Sabatini v. Las Vegas Metro. Police Dep't
369 F. Supp. 3d 1066 (D. Nevada, 2019)
Doe v. Marshall
367 F. Supp. 3d 1310 (M.D. Alabama, 2019)
United States v. Michael Albert Focia
869 F.3d 1269 (Eleventh Circuit, 2017)
United States v. Hunter
739 F.3d 492 (Tenth Circuit, 2013)
United States v. David Marshall Deal
438 F. App'x 807 (Eleventh Circuit, 2011)
Allied Veterans of the World, Inc. v. Seminole County
783 F. Supp. 2d 1197 (M.D. Florida, 2011)
National Organization for Marriage v. McKee
765 F. Supp. 2d 38 (D. Maine, 2011)
United States v. Ever Balbino Ibarguen-Mosquera
634 F.3d 1370 (Eleventh Circuit, 2011)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
615 F.3d 1369, 2010 WL 3365912, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-di-pietro-ca11-2010.