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Page Number: 2

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SNYDER v. UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

That crime carries a 10-year maximum prison sentence.  §666(a). 

This  case  involves  James  Snyder,  who  is  the  former  mayor  of
Portage, Indiana.  In 2013, while Snyder was mayor, Portage awarded 
two  contracts  to  a  local  truck  company,  Great  Lakes  Peterbilt,  and
ultimately  purchased  five  trash  trucks  from  the  company  for  about 
$1.1 million.  In 2014, Peterbilt cut a $13,000 check to Snyder.  The 
FBI  and  federal  prosecutors  suspected  that  the  payment  was  a
gratuity for the City’s trash truck contracts.  But Snyder said that the 
payment was for his consulting services as a contractor for Peterbilt. 
A  federal  jury  ultimately  convicted  Snyder  of  accepting  an  illegal
gratuity  in  violation  of  §666(a)(1)(B).    The  District  Court  sentenced 
Snyder to 1 year and 9 months in prison.  On appeal, Snyder argued 
that §666 criminalizes only bribes, not gratuities.  The Seventh Circuit 
affirmed Snyder’s conviction. 

Held: Section 666 proscribes bribes to state and local officials but does
not make it a crime for those officials to accept gratuities for their past 
acts.  Pp. 7–16. 

(a) Six reasons, taken together, lead the Court to conclude that §666 
is  a  bribery  statute  and  not  a  gratuities  statute—text,  statutory 
history,  statutory  structure,  statutory  punishments,  federalism,  and 
fair notice.  Pp. 7–14.

(1) The statutory text strongly suggests that §666—like §201(b)—
is a bribery statute, not a gratuities statute.  The dividing line between 
§201(b)’s  bribery  provision  and  §201(c)’s  gratuities  provision  is  that 
bribery  requires  an  official  to  have  a  corrupt  state  of  mind  and  to 
accept (or agree to accept) a payment intending to be influenced in an
official act.  Section 666 shares the defining characteristics of §201(b)’s 
bribery  provision.
  By  contrast,  §666  bears  little  resemblance  to
§201(c), which contains no express mens rea requirement.  Pp. 7–8.

(2) The  statutory  history  reinforces  that  result.    When  enacted, 
§666 borrowed language from §201(c), the gratuities statute for federal 
officials.  Two years later, Congress amended §666 to model it instead
on §201(b), the bribery statute.  It would be strange to interpret §666,
as the Government suggests, to mean the same thing now that it did 
before the amendment.  Pp. 8–9.

(3) Statutory structure reinforces that §666 is  a bribery statute,
not  a  two-for-one  bribery-and-gratuities  statute  as  the  Government 
posits.  The Government identifies no other provision in the U. S. Code
that prohibits bribes and gratuities in the same provision.  And §201 
does  not  do  so.    That  is  because  bribery  and  gratuities  are  “two 
separate crimes” with “two different sets of elements.”  United States 
v. Sun-Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U. S. 398, 404.  P. 9. 

(4) For  federal  officials,  Congress  has  separated  bribery  and 
gratuities  into  two  distinct  provisions  of  §201  for  good  reason:    The