## Facts

- Robert Waites Guthrie, a commercial turtle dealer, was involved with (1) alligator snapping turtles and (2) Alabama red-bellied turtles.
- Alabama regulations prohibited taking, possessing, selling, or trading alligator snapping turtles without a permit.
- Undercover federal agents offered to sell Guthrie an alligator snapping turtle; Guthrie declined the specific turtle but discussed sourcing and selling large turtles.
- Guthrie described a plan to sell large turtles to buyers in Japan and to create false documentation routing turtles through Louisiana to make them appear lawfully sourced.
- The Alabama red-bellied turtle had been listed by the Secretary of the Interior as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
- Guthrie was charged with (1) taking, possessing, selling, and transporting Alabama red-bellied turtles in violation of the ESA and (2) conspiring to sell alligator snapping turtles in violation of the Lacey Act, which criminalizes trading wildlife taken or sold in violation of state law.
- Guthrie entered a conditional guilty plea preserving appellate challenges to the Lacey Act theory and the ESA listing.

## Issues

1. Whether the Lacey Act’s use of state wildlife law as a predicate element for federal criminal liability violates the nondelegation doctrine.
2. Whether a defendant may defend a Lacey Act prosecution by collaterally attacking the validity of the underlying state wildlife regulation on state-constitutional grounds.
3. Whether a defendant prosecuted under the ESA may collaterally challenge a species’ endangered listing by offering new scientific evidence (including proposed DNA testing), and whether the listing was arbitrary or capricious on the existing administrative record.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the convictions and judgment.
- The court held the Lacey Act is constitutional; incorporating state-law violations as predicates for a federal offense is not an impermissible delegation.
- The court rejected Guthrie’s attempt to invalidate the Lacey Act predicate by challenging the state regulation’s validity under the Alabama Constitution.
- The court held Guthrie could not collaterally attack the ESA listing in the criminal case by introducing new scientific evidence or seeking DNA testing.
- On review of the administrative record, the court held the Secretary’s decision to list the Alabama red-bellied turtle as endangered was not arbitrary or capricious.

## Legal Principles

- Congress may define a federal crime that turns on the existence of a violation of state law without delegating federal legislative power to the states; state law operates as a predicate fact or element.
- In a Lacey Act prosecution, a defendant generally may not convert the federal criminal case into collateral litigation over the validity of the underlying state regulation based on state-law procedural or constitutional objections.
- ESA listing determinations are final agency actions subject to direct judicial review under the ESA/APA framework; criminal defendants may not use a later prosecution to reopen the listing based on new scientific evidence.
- Under APA arbitrary-and-capricious review, courts defer to the agency’s scientific judgments when the decision is reasoned and supported by the administrative record, even if there is scientific disagreement.

## Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit upheld Guthrie’s Lacey Act and ESA convictions, ruling that federal reliance on state wildlife prohibitions is constitutionally permissible, that collateral attacks on the state predicate regulations are not a defense, and that ESA species listings may not be relitigated in a criminal case through new scientific evidence where the original listing is supported on the administrative record.


United States v. Guthrie, 50 F.3d 936 (11th Cir. 1995)