Opinion ID: 357120
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: application of the statute to defendants' conduct

Text: 16 The basic question here is whether the statute should be interpreted broadly according to its text, its so-called plain meaning or narrowly according to the equity of the statute. As Chief Justice Bromley said in 1554, The judges who were our predecessors have sometimes expounded the words quite contrary to the text . . . in order to make them agree with reason and equity. 8 The Supreme Court has indicated, however, in two recent cases, United States v. Culbert 9 and Perez v. United States, 10 that a statute like this one should be applied according to its text without using rules of statutory construction to add elements to the crime or contract its coverage. 17 In Culbert, the Supreme Court this term, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Marshall, refused to narrow the text of another extortion statute, the Hobbs Act, 11 also aimed at organized crime. Finding the meaning of the statute clear from the text, the Court overruled decisions of this Circuit and the Ninth Circuit holding that conviction under the Act required proof of racketeering. It is inconceivable, the Court said, that, at the time Congress was so concerned about clearly defining the acts prohibited under the bill, it intended to make proof of racketeering a term not mentioned in the statute a separate prerequisite to criminal liability under the Hobbs Act. 12 18 Similarly, the Extortionate Credit Act whose terms were intended to encompass a broad scope of criminal activity, does not make proof of loansharking, organized crime or racketeering a separate prerequisite to criminal liability. 19 In Perez v. United States, the defendant attacked the constitutionality of the Extortionate Credit Act on the grounds that Congress had no power under the Commerce Clause to make a federal offense of purely intrastate activity. As previously pointed out, the statute makes it unnecessary to prove the use of interstate facilities or any effect on interstate commerce. Justice Douglas, writing for the majority, declined to read into the statute any jurisdictional requirements concerning the effect on interstate commerce and upheld the statute on the basis of Congressional findings that, as a class of activities, extortionate credit transactions have an inherent impact on interstate commerce. Extortion in its national setting is one way organized interstate crime holds its guns to the heads of the poor and the rich alike and syphons funds from numerous localities to finance its national operations. 13 Justice Stewart dissented because I am unable to discern any rational distinction between loansharking and other local crime, concluding that the definition and prosecution of local, intrastate crime are reserved to the states under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. 14 20 A reading of these two cases, Culbert and Perez, leads us to the conclusion that federal courts may not read into this extortion statute additional elements requiring proof of loansharking, organized crime or interstate commerce. No federal appellate court has been willing to read such a requirement into the statute. 15 Although the effect of this reading is to permit virtually plenary federal jurisdiction over extortionate debt collection practices, Congress has precluded the courts from constructing jurisdictional limitations on the statute and committed to administrative discretion the responsibility of reasonable enforcement of the Act. 21 The basis for the federal, as distinguished from the local, interest in prosecuting this case does not appear from the record, and we join the District Judge in questioning the wisdom of a statute which vests unguided discretion in federal prosecutors over local offenses without the limitations of statutory or administrative standards. 16 But Congress has expressed its purpose in a clear statute, the constitutionality of which is no longer in question; and the principle of legislative supremacy requires us to enforce the statutory language. The judgment of the District Court is therefore reversed and the case is remanded with instructions for the District Court to reinstate the jury verdict and proceed with sentencing. 17