ADAM KNIGHT SCANDAL: MORAL TURPITUDE CASE: Da Silva Neto v. Holder, 680 F.3d 25 (1st Cir. 2012) Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Filed: May 10th, 2012

  WE BELIEVE ADAM KNIGHT'S ACTIONS VIOLATED MORAL TURPITUDE:

"...contrary to the accepted rules of morality and the duties owed between persons or to society in general,"

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Da Silva Neto v. Holder, 680 F.3d 25 (1st Cir. 2012)

Court of Appeals for the First Circuit

Filed: May 10th, 2012

The term "moral turpitude" first appeared in a federal immigration statute in 1891. Cabral v. INS, 15 F.3d 193, 194 (1st Cir.1994). Congress has never defined the phrase, but we have found that "[t]he legislative history leaves no doubt *29. . . that Congress left the term `crime involving moral turpitude' to future administrative and judicial interpretation." Id. at 195. We have adopted the BIA's definition of a CIMT as "conduct that shocks the public conscience as being inherently base, vile, or depraved, and contrary to the accepted rules of morality and the duties owed between persons or to society in general," or, in other words, "an act which is per se morally reprehensible and intrinsically wrong" and is "accompanied by a vicious motive or a corrupt mind." Maghsoudi, 181 F.3d at 14 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also, e.g., Matter of Silva-Trevino, 24 I. & N. Dec. 687, 706 (A.G.2008) ("A finding of moral turpitude under the [INA] requires that a perpetrator have committed the reprehensible act with some form of scienter.").

The relatively amorphous nature of the moral turpitude definition has led to "a patchwork of different approaches" to the CIMT analysis among the circuit courts. Silva-Trevino, 24 I. & N. Dec. at 688. In Silva-Trevino, the Attorney General (AG) responded to that patchwork by attempting "to establish a uniform framework for ensuring that the [INA's] moral turpitude provisions are fairly and accurately applied." Id. Under the first step of the AG's three-part framework, the adjudicator must determine whether the crime at issue categorically involves moral turpitude by examining "whether there is a `realistic probability, not a theoretical possibility,'" that the criminal statute "would be applied to reach conduct that does not involve moral turpitude." Id. at 690 (quoting Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. 183, 193, 127 S. Ct. 815, 166 L. Ed. 2d 683 (2007)). If that "categorical" approach does not resolve the issue, the adjudicator must then apply a "modified categorical" approach, by examining the record of conviction to determine whether it "evidences a crime that in fact involved moral turpitude." Id. If the modified categorical approach is not conclusive, under Silva-Trevino, an adjudicator should proceed to a third step, which involves examining "evidence beyond the formal record of conviction."^[6]Id.