Arthur Andersen v. United States

on tomorrow's USSC agenda SCOTUSBlog gives an excellent rundown of the case here...

In this criminal case, the government alleged that high-ranking Andersen personnel “corruptly persuaded” company employees “with the intent to cause them to withhold documents from, or alter documents for, an official proceeding”—namely, an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The government made these allegations against the backdrop of widely disseminated reports that Andersen had engaged in “an unprecedented campaign of document destruction” in the months before it was served with a formal SEC subpoena for Enron-related documents.

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Andersen characterizes its conviction as an example of creative government lawyering that, if allowed to stand, will criminalize “common conduct undertaken without any consciousness of wrongdoing.” The government, in stark contrast, portrays Andersen’s response to Enron’s downfall as a unique and calculated attempt to convince its “employees to lay waste to vast troves of documents when a government investigation [was] viewed as highly probable.”~ The government attempts to refute Andersen’s argument point-by-point. The lower courts’ definition of “corruptly” was proper, the government asserts, because it is consistent with the “purpose-based” definition courts have applied to the same language in other obstruction of justice statutes. Andersen’s “transitive” reading, the government contends, would criminalize little if any conduct that is not independently proscribed by other federal statutes, like the one forbidding bribery. Furthermore, section 1512 does not require proof that the defendant knew its conduct was wrongful, since Congress uses the adverb “willfully” when it seeks to override the background principle that ignorance of the law is not a defense.

emphasis added is mine