Source: http://openjurist.org/504/us/255
Timestamp: 2015-07-30 04:39:36
Document Index: 791270960

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1951', '§ 1952', '§ 1951', '§ 557', '§ 1951', '§ 1951']

504 US 255 Evans v. United States | OpenJurist
504 U.S. 255 - Evans v. United States Home
504 US 255 Evans v. United States 112 S.Ct. 1881
119 L.Ed.2d 57
John H. EVANS, Jr., Petitionerv.UNITED STATES.
(a) Congress is presumed to have adopted the common-law definition of extortion—which does not require that a public official make a demand or request—unless it has instructed otherwise. See Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 263, 72 S.Ct. 240, 249-250, 96 L.Ed. 288. While the Act expanded the common-law definition to encompass conduct by a private individual as well as a public official, the portion of the Act referring to official misconduct continues to mirror the common-law definition. There is nothing in the sparse legislative history or the statutory text that could fairly be described as a "contrary direction," ibid., from Congress to narrow the offense's scope. The inclusion of the word "induced" in the definition does not require that the wrongful use of official power begin with a public official. That word is part of the definition of extortion by a private individual but not by a public official, and even if it did apply to a public official, it does not necessarily indicate that a transaction must be initiated by the bribe's recipient. Pp. 259-266.
(b) Evans' criticisms of the jury instruction—that it did not properly describe the quid pro quo requirement for conviction if the jury found that the payment was a campaign contribution, and that it did not require the jury to find duress—are rejected. The instruction satisfies the quid pro quo requirement of McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1807, 114 L.Ed.2d 307, because the offense is completed when the public official receives payment in return for his agreement to perform specific official acts; fulfillment of the quid pro quo is not an element of the offense. Nor is an affirmative step on the official's part an element of the offense on which an instruction need be given. Pp. 267-268.
STEVENS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, BLACKMUN, and SOUTER, JJ., joined, in Parts I and II of which O'CONNOR, J., joined, and in Part III of which KENNEDY, J., joined. O'CONNOR, J., and KENNEDY, J., filed opinions concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and SCALIA, J., joined.
C. Michael Abbott, Atlanta, Ga., for petitioner.
We granted certiorari, 500 U.S.—(1991), to resolve a conflict in the Circuits over the question whether an affirmative act of inducement by a public official, such as a demand, is an element of the offense of extortion "under color of official right" prohibited by the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951. We agree with the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that it is not, and therefore affirm the judgment of the court below.
* Petitioner was an elected member of the Board of Commissioners of DeKalb County, Georgia. During the period between March 1985 and October 1986, as part of an effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate allegations of public corruption in the Atlanta area, particularly in the area of rezonings of property, an FBI agent posing as a real estate developer talked on the telephone and met with petitioner on a number of occasions. Virtually all, if not all, of those conversations were initiated by the agent and most were recorded on tape or video. In those conversations, the agent sought petitioner's assistance in an effort to rezone a 25-acre tract of land for high-density residential use. On July 25, 1986, the agent handed petitioner cash totaling $7,000 and a check, payable to petitioner's campaign, for $1,000. Petitioner reported the check, but not the cash, on his state campaign-financing disclosure form; he also did not report the $7,000 on his 1986 federal income tax return. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Government, as we must in light of the verdict, see Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 80, 62 S.Ct. 457, 469-470, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942), we assume that the jury found that petitioner accepted the cash knowing that it was intended to ensure that he would vote in favor of the rezoning application and that he would try to persuade his fellow commissioners to do likewise. Thus, although petitioner did not initiate the transaction, his acceptance of the bribe constituted an implicit promise to use his official position to serve the interests of the bribe-giver.
In affirming petitioner's conviction, the Court of Appeals noted that the instruction did not require the jury to find that petitioner had demanded or requested the money, or that he had conditioned the performance of any official act upon its receipt. 910 F.2d 790, 796 (CA11 1990). The Court of Appeals held, however, that "passive acceptance of a benefit by a public official is sufficient to form the basis of a Hobbs Act violation if the official knows that he is being offered the payment in exchange for a specific requested exercise of his official power. The official need not take any specific action to induce the offering of the benefit." Ibid. (emphasis in original).1
This statement of the law by the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is consistent with holdings in eight other Circuits.2 Two Circuits, however, have held that an affirmative act of inducement by the public official is required to support a conviction of extortion under color of official right. United States v. O'Grady, 742 F.2d 682, 687 (CA2 1984) (en banc) ("Although receipt of benefits by a public official is a necessary element of the crime, there must also be proof that the public official did something, under color of his public office, to cause the giving of benefits"); United States v. Aguon, 851 F.2d 1158, 1166 (CA9 1988) (en banc) ("We find ourselves in accord with the Second Circuit's conclusion that inducement is an element required for conviction under the Hobbs Act"). Because the majority view is consistent with the common-law definition of extortion, which we believe Congress intended to adopt, we endorse that position.
It is a familiar "maxim that a statutory term is generally presumed to have its common-law meaning." Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 592, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 2155, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990). As we have explained, "where Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed. In such case, absence of contrary direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, not as a departure from them." Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 263, 72 S.Ct. 240, 249-250, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952).3
At common law, extortion was an offense committed by a public official who took "by colour of his office"4 money that was not due to him for the performance of his official duties.5 A demand, or request, by the public official was not an element of the offense.6 Extortion by the public official was the rough equivalent of what we would now describe as "taking a bribe." It is clear that petitioner committed that offense.7 The question is whether the federal statute, insofar as it applies to official extortion, has narrowed the common-law definition.
Congress has unquestionably expanded the common-law definition of extortion to include acts by private individuals pursuant to which property is obtained by means of force, fear, or threats. It did so by implication in the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952, see United States v. Nardello, 393 U.S. 286, 289-296, 89 S.Ct. 534, 536-539, 21 L.Ed.2d 487 (1969), and expressly in the Hobbs Act. The portion of the Hobbs Act that is relevant to our decision today provides:
"(2) The term 'extortion' means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right." 18 U.S.C. § 1951.
The present form of the statute is a codification of a 1946 enactment, the Hobbs Act,8 which amended the federal Anti-Racketeering Act.9 In crafting the 1934 Act, Congress was careful not to interfere with legitimate activities between employers and employees. See H.R.Rep. No. 1833, 73rd Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1934). The 1946 Amendment was intended to encompass the conduct held to be beyond the reach of the 1934 Act by our decision in United States v. Teamsters, 315 U.S. 521, 62 S.Ct. 642, 86 L.Ed. 1004 (1942).10 The Amendment did not make any significant change in the section referring to obtaining property "under color of official right" that had been prohibited by the 1934 Act. Rather, Congress intended to broaden the scope of the Anti-Racketeering Act and was concerned primarily with distinguishing between "legitimate" labor activity and labor "racketeering," so as to prohibit the latter while permitting the former. See 91 Cong.Rec. 11899-11922 (1945).
Many of those who supported the Amendment argued that its purpose was to end the robbery and extortion that some union members had engaged in, to the detriment of all labor and the American citizenry. They urged that the Amendment was not, as their opponents charged, an anti-labor measure, but rather, it was a necessary measure in the wake of this Court's decision in United States v. Teamsters.11 In their view, the Supreme Court had mistakenly exempted labor from laws prohibiting robbery and extortion, whereas Congress had intended to extend such laws to all American citizens. See, e.g., 91 Cong.Rec. 11910 (1945) (remarks of Rep. Springer) ("To my mind this is a bill that protects the honest laboring people in our country. There is nothing contained in this bill that relates to labor. This measure, if passed, will relate to every American citizen"); id., at 11912 (remarks of Rep. Jennings) ("The bill is one to protect the right of citizens of this country to market their products without any interference from lawless bandits").
Although the present statutory text is much broader12 than the common-law definition of extortion because it encompasses conduct by a private individual as well as conduct by a public official,13 the portion of the statute that refers to official misconduct continues to mirror the common-law definition. There is nothing in either the statutory text or the legislative history that could fairly be described as a "contrary direction," Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S., at 263, 72 S.Ct., at 249-250, from Congress to narrow the scope of the offense.
The legislative history is sparse and unilluminating with respect to the offense of extortion. There is a reference to the fact that the terms "robbery and extortion" had been construed many times by the courts and to the fact that the definitions of those terms were "based on the New York law." 89 Cong.Rec. 3227 (1943) (statement of Rep. Hobbs); see 91 Cong.Rec. 11906 (1945) (statement of Rep. Robsion). In view of the fact that the New York statute applied to a public officer "who asks, or receives, or agrees to receive" unauthorized compensation, N.Y.Penal Code § 557 (1881), the reference to New York law is consistent with an intent to apply the common-law definition. The language of the New York statute quoted above makes clear that extortion could be committed by one who merely received an unauthorized payment.14 This was the statute that was in force in New York when the Hobbs Act was enacted.
The two courts that have disagreed with the decision to apply the common-law definition have interpreted the word "induced" as requiring a wrongful use of official power that "begins with the public official, not with the gratuitous actions of another." United States v. O'Grady, 742 F.2d, at 691; see United States v. Aguon, 851 F.2d, at 1166 (" 'inducement' can be in the overt form of a 'demand,' or in a more subtle form such as 'custom' or 'expectation' "). If we had no common-law history to guide our interpretation of the statutory text, that reading would be plausible. For two reasons, however, we are convinced that it is incorrect.
First, we think the word "induced" is a part of the definition of the offense by the private individual, but not the offense by the public official. In the case of the private individual, the victim's consent must be "induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence or fear." In the case of the public official, however, there is no such requirement. The statute merely requires of the public official that he obtain "property from another, with his consent, . . . under color of official right." The use of the word "or" before "under color of official right" supports this reading.15
Second, even if the statute were parsed so that the word "induced" applied to the public officeholder, we do not believe the word "induced" necessarily indicates that the transaction must be initiated by the recipient of the bribe. Many of the cases applying the majority rule have concluded that the wrongful acceptance of a bribe establishes all the inducement that the statute requires.16 They conclude that the coercive element is provided by the public office itself. And even the two courts that have adopted an inducement requirement for extortion under color of official right do not require proof that the inducement took the form of a threat or demand. See United States v. O'Grady, 742 F.2d, at 687; United States v. Aguon, 851 F.2d, at 1166.17
Petitioner argues that the jury charge with respect to extortion, see supra, at 257-258, allowed the jury to convict him on the basis of the "passive acceptance of a contribution." Brief for Petitioner 24.18 He contends that the instruction did not require the jury to find "an element of duress such as a demand," Brief for Petitioner 22, and it did not properly describe the quid pro quo requirement for conviction if the jury found that the payment was a campaign contribution.
We reject petitioner's criticism of the instruction, and conclude that it satisfies the quid pro quo requirement of McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1807, 114 L.Ed.2d 307 (1991), because the offense is completed at the time when the public official receives a payment in return for his agreement to perform specific official acts; fulfillment of the quid pro quo is not an element of the offense. We also reject petitioner's contention that an affirmative step is an element of the offense of extortion "under color of official right" and need be included in the instruction.19 As we explained above, our construction of the statute is informed by the common-law tradition from which the term of art was drawn and understood. We hold today that the Government need only show that a public official has obtained a payment to which he was not entitled, knowing that the payment was made in return for official acts.20
Our conclusion is buttressed by the fact that so many other courts that have considered the issue over the last 20 years have interpreted the statute in the same way.21 Moreover, given the number of appellate court decisions, together with the fact that many of them have involved prosecutions of important officials well known in the political community,22 it is obvious that Congress is aware of the prevailing view that common-law extortion is proscribed by the Hobbs Act. The silence of the body that is empowered to give us a "contrary direction" if it does not want the common-law rule to survive is consistent with an application of the normal presumption identified in Taylor and Morissette, supra.
An argument not raised by petitioner is now advanced by the dissent. It contends that common-law extortion was limited to wrongful takings under a false pretense of official right. Post, at 279-280; see post, at 281 (offense of extortion "was understood . . . [as] a wrongful taking under a false pretense of official right") (emphasis in original); post, at 282. It is perfectly clear, however, that although extortion accomplished by fraud was a well-recognized type of extortion, there were other types as well. As the court explained in Commonwealth v. Wilson, 30 Pa.Super. 26 (1906), an extortion case involving a payment by a would-be brothel owner to a police captain to ensure the opening of her house:
"The form of extortion most commonly dealt with in the decisions is the corrupt taking by a person in office of a fee for services which should be rendered gratuitously; or when compensation is permissible, of a larger fee than the law justifies, or a fee not yet due; but this is not a complete definition of the offense, by which I mean that it does not include every form of common-law extortion." Id., at 30.
See also Commonwealth v. Brown, 23 Pa.Super. 470, 488-489 (1903) (defendants charged with and convicted of conspiracy to extort because they accepted pay for obtaining and procuring the election of certain persons to the position of school-teachers); State v. Sweeney, 180 Minn. 450, 456, 231 N.W. 225, 228 (1930) (alderman's acceptance of money for the erection of a barn, the running of a gambling house, and the opening of a filling station would constitute extortion) (dicta); State v. Barts, 132 N.J.L. 74, 76, 83, 38 A.2d 838, 841, 844 (Sup.Ct.1944) (police officer, who received $1,000 for not arresting someone who had stolen money, was properly convicted of extortion because "generically extortion is an abuse of public justice and a misuse by oppression of the power with which the law clothes a public officer"); White v. State, 56 Ga. 385, 389 (1876) (If a ministerial officer used his position "for the purpose of awing or seducing" a person to pay him a bribe that would be extortion).
The dissent's theory notwithstanding, not one of the cases it cites, see post, at 281-282, and n. 3, holds that the public official is innocent unless he has deceived the payor by representing that the payment was proper. Indeed, none makes any reference to the state of mind of the payor, and none states that a "false pretense" is an element of the offense. Instead, those cases merely support the proposition that the services for which the fee is paid must be official and that the official must not be entitled to the fee that he collected—both elements of the offense that are clearly satisfied in this case. The complete absence of support for the dissent's thesis presumably explains why it was not advanced by petitioner in the District Court or the Court of Appeals, is not recognized by any Court of Appeals, and is not advanced in any scholarly commentary.23
I join Parts I and II of the Court's opinion, because in my view they correctly answer the question on which the Court granted certiorari—whether or not an act of inducement is an element of the offense of extortion under color of official right. See Pet. for Cert. i. The issue raised by the dissent and discussed in Part III of the Court's opinion is not fairly included in this question, see our Rule 14.1(a), and sound prudential reasons suggest that the Court should not address it. Cf. Yee v. City of Escondido, --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 112 S.Ct. 1522, ---- - ----, 118 L.Ed.2d 153 (1992). Neither party in this case has briefed or argued the question. A proper resolution of the issue requires a detailed examination of common law extortion cases, which in turn requires intensive historical research. As there appear to be substantial arguments on either side, we would be far more assured of arriving at the correct result were we to await a case in which the issue had been addressed by the parties. It is unfair to the respondent to decide a case on a ground not raised by the petitioner and which the respondent has had no opportunity to address. For these reasons, I join neither the dissent nor Part III of the Court's opinion, and I express no view as to which is correct.
The Court gives a summary of its decision in these words: "We hold today that the Government need only show that a public official has obtained a payment to which he was not entitled, knowing that the payment was made in return for official acts." Ante, at 268. In my view the dissent is correct to conclude that this language requires a quid pro quo as an element of the Government's case in a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 1951, see post, at ----, and the Court's opinion can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with this rule. Although the Court appears to accept the requirement of a quid pro quo as an alternative rationale, in my view this element of the offense is essential to a determination of those acts which are criminal and those which are not in a case in which the official does not pretend that he is entitled by law to the property in question. Here the prosecution did establish a quid pro quo that embodied the necessary elements of a statutory violation. I join part III of the Court's opinion and concur in the judgment affirming the conviction. I write this separate opinion to explain my analysis and understanding of the statute.
With regard to the question whether the word "induced" in the statutory definition of extortion applies to the phrase "under color of official right," 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(2), I find myself in substantial agreement with the dissent. Scrutiny of the placement of commas will not, in the final analysis, yield a convincing answer, and we are left with two quite plausible interpretations. Under these circumstances, I agree with the dissent that the rule of lenity requires that we avoid the harsher one. See post, at ----. We must take as our starting point the assumption that the portion of the statute at issue here defines extortion as "the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced . . . under color of official right."
I agree with the Court, on the other hand, that the word "induced" does not "necessarily indicat[e] that the transaction must be initiated by the" public official. Ante, at ---- (emphasis in original). Something beyond the mere acceptance of property from another is required, however, or else the word "induced" would be superfluous. That something, I submit, is the quid pro quo. The ability of the official to use or refrain from using authority is the "color of official right" which can be invoked in a corrupt way to induce payment of money or to otherwise obtain property. The inducement generates a quid pro quo, under color of official right, that the statute prohibits. The term "under color of" is used, as I think both the Court and the dissent agree, to sweep within the statute those corrupt exercises of authority that the law forbids but that nevertheless cause damage because the exercise is by a governmental official. Cf. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 184, 81 S.Ct. 473, 482-483, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961) (" 'Misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law, is action taken 'under color of state law' ") (quoting United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 326, 61 S.Ct. 1031, 1043, 85 L.Ed. 1368 (1941)).
The criminal law in the usual course concerns itself with motives and consequences, not formalities. And the trier of fact is quite capable of deciding the intent with which words were spoken or actions taken as well as the reasonable construction given to them by the official and the payor. See McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 1807, 1815, 114 L.Ed.2d 307 (1991) ("It goes without saying that matters of intent are for the jury to consider"). In this respect a prosecution under the statute has some similarities to a contract dispute, with the added and vital element that motive is crucial. For example, a quid pro quo with the attendant corrupt motive can be inferred from an ongoing course of conduct. Cf. United States v. O'Grady, 742 F.2d 682, 694 (CA2 1984) (Pierce, J., concurring). In such instances, for a public official to commit extortion under color of official right, his course of dealings must establish a real understanding that failure to make a payment will result in the victimization of the prospective payor or the withholding of more favorable treatment, a victimization or withholding accomplished by taking or refr