Opinion of the Court
Third, Pugin and Cordero-Garcia argue that offenses “relating to obstruction of justice” require a pending investigation or proceeding; otherwise, they maintain that those offenses would be redundant with other offenses covered by §1101(a)(43)(S)—in particular, offenses “relating to … perjury or subornation of perjury, or bribery of a witness.” But Pugin and Cordero-Garcia fail to explain how requiring a pending investigation or proceeding for obstruction offenses would resolve the claimed redundancies with perjury or bribery offenses. After all, perjury and bribery offenses often “relat[e] to obstruction of justice.” In any event, “redundancies are common in statutory drafting—sometimes in a congressional effort to be doubly sure, sometimes because of congressional inadvertence or lack of foresight, or sometimes simply because of the shortcomings of human communication.” Barton v. Barr, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 16). As a result, “the better overall reading of the statute” sometimes “contains some redundancy.” Ibid.; Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian, 590 U. S. ___, ___, n. 5 (2020) (slip op., at 10, n. 5); Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc., 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 11). Section 1101(a)(43) illustrates the point: Congress listed a large number of offenses that would qualify as aggravated felonies, likely to avoid unintended gaps. So it is not surprising to find some overlap. To take one example, the definition of “aggravated felony” covers “murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a minor” and separately covers “crime[s] of violence.” §§1101(a)(43)(A), (F).[1]
- ↑ The same point applies to §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii), which lists both “obstruction of justice” and “witness tampering.” Neither Pugin nor Cordero-Garcia cites that provision—presumably because the provision appears in a different part of the statute and contains different language. Moreover, Congress took the same belt-and-suspenders approach in §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii) that it did in §1101(a)(43). See §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii) (covering among other things “being held hostage; peonage; involuntary
