New York Times

WASHINGTON — A narrowly divided Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a Florida fisherman, throwing out his conviction for tossing evidence — undersize grouper — back into the Gulf of Mexico under a federal law aimed mostly at white-collar crime.

The fisherman, John L. Yates, was convicted of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which imposes a maximum sentence of 20 years for the destruction of “any record, document or tangible object” in order to obstruct an investigation.

In two opinions, five justices accepted Mr. Yates’s argument that fish were not the sort of tangible objects with which the law was concerned. Their analysis was based on a close reading of the words and structure of the law.

The case arose from a 2007 search of the Miss Katie, Mr. Yates’s fishing vessel. A Florida field officer, John Jones, boarded it at sea and noticed fish that seemed less than 20 inches long, which was under the minimum legal size of red grouper at the time.

Mr. Jones, an officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and a federal deputy, measured the fish and placed the 72 he deemed too small in a crate. He issued a citation and instructed Mr. Yates to take the crate to port for seizure.

But Mr. Yates had the fish thrown overboard and replaced with larger ones. A second inspection in port aroused suspicions, and a crew member eventually told law enforcement officials what had happened.

Mr. Yates was prosecuted under the financial fraud law, which was enacted after the collapse of Enron, the giant energy company. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 days’ imprisonment.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for four justices, seemed to concede that the term “tangible objects” might in some settings encompass fish.

“Ordinarily,” she wrote, “a word’s usage accords with its dictionary definition. In law as in life, however, the same words, placed in different contexts, sometimes mean different things.”

In announcing her opinion from the bench, Justice Ginsburg used more colorful language. “Fish one may fry,” she said, “but may one falsify, or make a false entry in the sea dwelling creatures?” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined her opinion.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. concurred on similar grounds. When one hears the term “tangible object,” he said, “a fish does not spring to mind — nor does an antelope, a colonial farmhouse, a hydrofoil or an oil derrick.”

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the real issue in the case, Yates v. United States, No. 13-7451, was that the law is too harsh. It is, she wrote, “too broad and undifferentiated, with too-high maximum penalties, which give prosecutors too much leverage and sentencers too much discretion.”

She added, “And I’d go further: In those ways,” the law “is unfortunately not an outlier, but an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code.”

Still, she said, “this court does not get to rewrite the law.” She said it was “broad but clear.”

“A fish is, of course, a discrete thing that possesses physical form,” Justice Kagan wrote, citing as authority the Dr. Seuss classic “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.”

It does not matter, she said, that what Mr. Yates destroyed was not a document.

“A person who hides a murder victim’s body is no less culpable than one who burns the victim’s diary,” she wrote. “A fisherman, like John Yates, who dumps undersized fish to avoid a fine is no less blameworthy than one who shreds his vessel’s catch log for the same reason.”

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion.