Paragraph two of 18 U.S.C. Section 1542 criminalizes the willful and knowing use of a passport secured by reason of a false statement. Long ago, in a galaxy far away, the Supreme Court held that "willfully and knowingly" in the context of paragraph two means "deliberately and with knowledge" and not a damn thing more. The case, as every schoolboy knows, is Browder v. United States. (I was discussing one of Browder's more subtle points just yesterday with my haberdasher.) In U.S. v. Aifang Ye, the Ninth Circuit dealt with the appeal of Ms. Ye, who was convicted under Section 1542, paragraph one, of willfully and knowingly making a false statement in a passport application. The Ninth Circuit held that what's good for paragraph two is good for paragraph one. And what about those pesky intervening Supreme Court decisions seeming to indicate that willfulness requires "bad purpose" and a "knowledge that the conduct was unlawful"? You know, cases like Bryan v. United States and Safeco Insurance Company of America v. Burr? Not to worry. All disposed of in footnote two of the Ninth Circuit's opinion. Since Browder "directly applies" (although it dealt with a different paragraph of a predecessor statute), its ruling controls, even if its reasoning has been rejected in subsequent Supreme Court decisions.

(wisenberg)