820
Opinion of the Court
Finally, this Court has indicated that the Constitution itself limits a State's power to define crimes in ways that would permit juries to convict while disagreeing about means, at least where that definition risks serious unfairness and lacks support in history or tradition. Schad v. Arizona, 501 U. S., at 632-633 (plurality opinion); id., at 651 (Scalia, J., concurring) ("We would not permit . . . an indictment charging that the defendant assaulted either X on Tuesday or Y on Wednesday . . ."). We have no reason to believe that Congress intended to come close to, or to test, those constitutional limits when it wrote this statute. See Garrett v. United States, 471 U. S. 773, 783-784 (1985) (citing H. R. Rep. No. 91-1444, pt. 1, pp. 83-84 (1970)) (in making CCE a separate crime, rather than a sentencing provision, Congress sought increased procedural protections for defendants); cf. Gomez v. United States, 490 U. S. 858, 864 (1989) ("It is our settled policy to avoid an interpretation of a federal statute that engenders constitutional issues if a reasonable alternative interpretation poses no constitutional question"); Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 346-348 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring).
B
The Government's arguments for an interpretation of "violations" as means are not sufficiently powerful to overcome the considerations just mentioned, those of language, tradition, and potential unfairness. The Government, emphasizing the words "continuing series," says that the statute, in seeking to punish drug kingpins, focuses upon the drug business, not upon the particular violations that constitute the business. Brief for United States 18-19. The argument, however, begs the question. Linguistically speaking, the statute punishes those kingpins who are involved in a "continuing series of violations" of the drug laws. And Congress might well have intended a jury to focus upon individual violations in order to assure guilt of the serious
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