Charles W. Christopher v. United States

This Court has applied two standards for whether a statute is sufficiently ambiguous to trigger the rule of lenity. One standard asks whether there is “reasonable doubt” about the statute’s meaning. Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. 103, 108 (1990); see also Wooden v. United States, 595 U.S. 360, 383–97 (2022) (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (arguing in favor of the reasonable doubt standard). The other asks whether the statute contains a “grievous ambiguity.” Chapman v. United States, 500 U.S. 453, 463 (1991) (quoting Huddleston v. United States, 415 U.S. 814, 831 (1974)); see also Wooden, 595 U.S. at 376–79 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (arguing in favor of the grievous ambiguity standard). As the en banc Fifth Circuit recently observed, “[t]he Supreme Court does not appear to have decided which of these standards govern the rule of lenity.” Cargill v. Garland, 57 F.4th 447, 469 (5th Cir. 2023) (en banc) (citations omitted). The question presented is this: What degree of statutory ambiguity triggers the rule of lenity?