Usually when a fisherman tells a fish story, he makes the fish as big as he can carry. But on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case about a fisherman convicted of deep-sixing some fish altogether so no one could accurately check their size.
The question before the justices is whether his conviction, based on a law passed after a scandal that destroyed energy firm Enron and resulted in criminal convictions for accounting firm Arthur Andersen, should get the hook.
Commercial fisherman John Yates and his crew were fishing for grouper in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico when Florida Fish and Wildlife officer John Jones boarded the boat. Jones, suspecting that the fishermen were keeping fish smaller than the 20-inch minimum, measured some of the catch and found 72 grouper that were undersized. As fisherman Yates tells the story, he got "a citation for short fish; it's like a speeding ticket."
Jones, who had been deputized as a federal officer, ordered the fish kept, but when the boat arrived on shore he determined that the fish in the crate were not the same ones he had measured. Yates professes surprise at what happened down the line.
Read the full story at NPR>>
Want to read more about Yates' grouper citation? Click here...