Comma Conundrums: How Grammar Can Keep You Out of Jail

Quick, before the Feds kick down my door—let me tell you a story.

This is a case of alleged corruption, unproven fraud, and suspected malfeasance…all made possible by a small grammatical ambiguity.

What if I told you that a missing comma nearly let me slip away with half a million dollars of ill-gotten taxpayer money? Well, “slip away” might be the wrong way to put it—the questionable actions can be justified as perfectly legal…from a certain point of view.

Where to begin?

The Case of the Missing Comma

Hang on…I think I heard a SWAT van pull up.

Anyway—the case.

During one of my terms as Governor of The Virgin Islands (I do it part-time), I appropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars in Public Works funding to make some home renovations on my private estate. These renovations were fantastic; the permanent installation of a concrete guard house and aluminum security fencing did a great job of keeping kids off my lawn.

The problem is, not everybody thought I was right in appropriating these publicly-collected funds for my personal use. They even had the nerve to take me to court over it! My lawyer’s defense was based around the wording of the government Act regulating where the taxpayer money could possibly go:

The sum of $1,305,000 is appropriated in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007 from the savings realized in SECTION 16 to the Department of Public Works for engineering designs, construction, repairs or the resurfacing of roads.”

To hear my lawyer tell it, the language was clear—Public Works funding could be used for engineering designs, construction, or repairs/resurfacing of roads. Home renovations on my private estate fall under the category of “construction,” right? Slam dunk.

The Last of the Antecedents

I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. They sound frantic. I hope I remembered to lock my door.

Where was I? Oh yes—my lawyer’s grammatical manipulation of the legal system. See, my defense leveraged a specific grammar doctrine to argue that no crime had been committed. This doctrine is called “the last antecedent rule,” and has been a cause of some serious drama in the legal world.160112-image-legal books

The last antecedent rule involves the importance of qualifier location and comma placement in a sentence. This rule mandates that qualifying words or phrases in a sentence refer to the words immediately preceding the qualifier.

Let’s look at an example:

“My favorite foods are candy and apples from the tree.”

This statement can be interpreted in two ways:

  • I like [regular] candy and apples from the tree
  • I like candy [from the tree] and apples from the tree

The last antecedent rule dictates the former be the preferred choice…which I agree with. I hate tree candy, myself. The qualifier [from the tree] applies only to the word [apple]. This doctrine is commonly used by courts to clear up legally ambiguous wording in contracts and other legal documents.

With that in mind, let’s refer back to the excerpt from my legal case:

“…for engineering designs, construction, repairs or the resurfacing of roads.”

Applying the last antecedent rule, consider how my lawyer was able to argue his way out of this case. While the government obviously intended to use the money for design and upkeep of public roads, the missing comma after the word “repairs” created a legal ambiguity. Without that little comma, my lawyer was able to argue that the only authorized use of the money that applied to roads was “resurfacing”—leaving plenty of room for confusion as to what the other uses could entail. I decided that I needed an awesome security perimeter.

We Want Clarity

Someone’s pounding on the door and shouting at me. Can’t they see I’m trying to write?

This legal issue was further confused when an audit by The Inspector General appeared: “In April 2007, the Legislature passed Act No. 6917, reprogramming the $1.3 million for the specific purpose of engineering design, construction, repair, or resurfacing of roads.

The Inspector General’s office actually added a comma in their affidavit after “repair,” clearing up the previous ambiguity. The problem is that the original Act failed to take this small comma into consideration and opened the door to a storm of legal argument and hemming and hawing over political agendas. Think of the manpower and administrative costs that go into a legal case of this size. Sure, typos are unavoidable, but it seems like a shame to initiate such a brutal legal process for want of a single keystroke.

It’s at this point, friends, that I must make a confession:

I was never the Governor of The Virgin Islands. Nobody ever trusted me with half a million dollars. And that pounding on my door probably isn’t a SWAT team so much as it is the pizza guy.

The rest of the story is true, though. Our protagonist in question is actually the melodic-sounding John DeJongh Junior, 28th Governor of The Virgin Islands who was recently arrested for the supposed embezzlement of taxpayer money. The case is still ongoing.

Should he be convicted? Well, we’ll leave that up to the courts to decide. Those curious for a more in-depth legal review can find info here. One thing is for sure, though—we all need to start double checking our documents. You never know when a comma (or lack thereof) can make all the difference.


Greg Hill is a web content writer living in Colorado who doesn’t leave “room for cream” in his coffee.