Opinion ID: 762139
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: 12 Under 18 U.S.C. § 1958, the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire is a federal offense. Section 1958 contained the following provisions at the time of Weathers's arrest: 13 (a) Whoever travels in or causes another (including the intended victim) to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses or causes another (including the intended victim) to use the mail or any facility in interstate or foreign commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of any State or the United States as consideration for the receipt of, or as consideration for a promise or agreement to pay, anything of pecuniary value, or who conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both.... 14 18 U.S.C. § 1958 (1996) (emphasis added). 1 But, while the substantive prohibition in § 1958(a) speaks in terms of a facility in interstate commerce, the section that follows it defines facility of interstate commerce to include means of transportation and communication. See 18 U.S.C. § 1958(b)(2). Unfortunately, it does not otherwise define the term facility in interstate commerce, and the term facility of interstate commerce does not appear in subsection (a), the substantive provision that spells out the elements of the offense. 15 The district court struggled mightily to reconcile use of the phrase facility in interstate commerce in § 1958(a) with use of the phrase facility of interstate commerce in § 1958(b)(2). Unable to find a case directly in point, the court identified two cases that it considered analogous: United States v. Paredes, 950 F.Supp. 584 (S.D.N.Y.1996), and United States v. Stevens, 842 F.Supp. 96 (S.D.N.Y.1994). Ultimately, however, these two cases proved less than helpful. Although both involved the question of whether the use of a beeper in furtherance of a murder-for-hire scheme satisfies the interstate commerce requirement of § 1958, the answers produced by the two district courts that decided the cases were in conflict. The court in Paredes read § 1958 as prohibiting the use [of] a facility in interstate commerce and, therefore, held that the intra state use of the defendant's inter state paging system did not satisfy the interstate nexus requirement for jurisdiction over a murder-for-hire charge. Paredes, 950 F.Supp. at 586-87, 589-90. Conversely, the court in Stevens interpreted the statute as prohibiting any interstate use of a facility and held that the intra state use of the defendant's inter state paging system did satisfy the interstate nexus requirement for jurisdiction over a § 1958 murder-for-hire charge. Stevens, 842 F.Supp. at 98. 16 The district court's initial ruling on the § 1958 issue came in response to the defendant's first motion for judgment of acquittal, resulting in the court's decision to allow the government to reopen its case to attempt to satisfy that interpretation. The district judge indicated that because one section of the statute refers to facilities in interstate commerce, whereas another section speaks of facilities of interstate commerce, there are two grammatically cognizable interpretations, one stressing use and the other stressing facility. One stresses how the facility is used under the particular facts, and the other stresses whether the facility itself is a facility of interstate commerce. The district judge then announced his intention to fashion a hybrid of the approaches taken in Paredes and Stevens: 17 I think that the question that we are presented with is how is the communication facility used under these particular circumstances not with respect to where the call was completed but how the facility itself was used. 18 In his subsequent ruling on this question, denying Weathers's motion for a judgment of acquittal after the government closed its case for the second time, the district judge noted: 19 I commented yesterday that if the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court were to impose a call-completion test, then its clear that the defendant is entitled to dismissal of the indictment based on the lack of jurisdiction because it is obvious that the call was completed in Kentucky from a Kentucky initiation call. 20 But I think that the rationale for my decision yesterday is actually somewhat strengthened by this testimony because I had not any information that the cell sites in the towers were actually in Indiana, and my positing was that perhaps when a signal went out, that the search area was conducted by radio waves through the air in Indiana. Now I find that actually Bell South Mobility maintains hardware in southern Indiana that is connected electronically to the ... METSO.... [T]hese cell sites and towers and cell monitoring equipment and hardware are in southern Indiana and [ ] are electronically connected to the METSO, which receives the initial phone call by the land line to the cell system, which in this case is Bell South Mobility. 21 Then all the sites are checked to determine where in the area, if the cell phone is on, where in the area it might be, including southern Indiana by actually making electronic contact with the hardware that Bell South maintains in southern Indiana. 22 This strengthens my conclusion that Bell South Mobility, under these particular facts and circumstances, is an interstate communication facility and that the particular use here involves an interstate communication not to complete the phone call but to assess where the cell phone was and if it was on, where and what particular cell site it might be registered. 23 So I think, based on the nature, the hardware, and the way that the system operates and did on this particular occasion by nature and also by use, as I said yesterday, I think that this was a communication facility usage that was interstate. 24 If we were free to look only to the definition provided in subsection (b)(2), the resolution of this case would be fairly simple. It is well established that telephones, even when used intrastate, constitute instrumentalities of interstate commerce. See Aquionics Acceptance Corp. v. Kollar, 503 F.2d 1225, 1228 (6th Cir.1974) (holding use of telephone in intrastate service satisfies jurisdictional requirements of § 10(b) of Securities and Exchange Act); see also United States v. Graham, 856 F.2d 756 (6th Cir.1988) (holding use of telephone to initiate and receive interstate calls satisfies interstate commerce requirement of Travel Act); FTC v. Shaffner, 626 F.2d 32, 37 (7th Cir.1980) (noting defendant's use of telephone constituted use of instrumentality of interstate commerce). Similarly, cellular telephones, even in the absence of evidence that they were used to make interstate calls, have been held to be instrumentalities of interstate commerce. See e.g., United States v. Clayton, 108 F.3d 1114, 1117 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 233, 139 L.Ed.2d 165 (1997) (holding cellular telephones to be instrumentalities of interstate commerce). 25 Nevertheless, it is clear from prior decisions of this court that the distinction between in and of interstate commerce, at least when used in two different statutes, is critical. See, e.g., Aquionics Acceptance Corp., 503 F.2d at 1228. It also appears that the two phrases, facility in interstate commerce and facility of interstate commerce, encompass different categories of activity, both of which Congress intended to regulate. In interpreting the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952, of which the current murder-for-hire statute was originally a subset, we have previously discussed the significance of the use of the phrase instrumentality in interstate commerce in the Travel Act, as opposed to other statutes that speak in terms of an instrumentality of interstate commerce, and concluded that a statute that speaks in terms of an instrumentality in interstate commerce rather than an instrumentality of interstate commerce is intended to apply to interstate activities only. United States v. Barry, 888 F.2d 1092, 1095 (6th Cir.1989). For this reason, we must reject the district court's attempt to reconcile the differences in the wording of § 1958(a) and (b)(2) by integrating them to apply to a single category of activities. 26 This conclusion is bolstered by the Supreme Court's recent exegesis of the Commerce Clause in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995). There, the Court held that in passing the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made the possession of a gun in a school zone a federal offense, Congress exceeded its authority under the Commerce Clause. After considering its prior interstate commerce jurisprudence, the Court identified three broad categories of activity that Congress may regulate under the Commerce Clause: (1) the use of the channels of interstate commerce; (2) the instrumentalities of interstate commerce; and (3) activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. See id. at 558-59, 115 S.Ct. 1624. Hence, we conclude that the phrase facility in interstate commerce is best interpreted as Congress's attempt to regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce and the phrase facility of interstate commerce as an attempt to regulate the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, as those categories are delineated in Lopez. Hence, there is no contradiction between the two phrases; they encompass two separate, although potentially overlapping, categories of activity that were identified by the Court in Lopez as categories that Congress could regulate under the Commerce Clause. 27 Yet, the problem of divining the correct interpretation of § 1958 remains, because we have before us not the use of the two phrases in question in two different statutes, but in separate subsections of the same statute, in a manner that might otherwise indicate that they were intended to be used interchangeably. Given that this cannot be the case, we conclude that the key prohibition creating the criminal offense is found in subsection (a) and that it controls over the provision in subsection (b), which, after all, merely defines an otherwise non-existent term. Hence, in order to establish the court's jurisdiction under § 1958, the government must show that the defendant used a facility in interstate commerce. We are then left with the question of whether that requirement has been met here. Under the particular facts of this case, we conclude that it has. 28 In deciding this issue, we focus on the evidence regarding the technical aspects of the operation of Weathers's cellular telephone, and the legal consequences flow therefrom. Cf. FPC v. Florida Power & Light Co., 404 U.S. 453, 92 S.Ct. 637, 30 L.Ed.2d 600 (1972), in which the United States Supreme Court emphasized that legal conclusions may depend upon the evaluation of technical facts. That case turned on the Federal Power Commission's finding that energy from the state power company was transferred into a bus, the point of connection between several regional utilities where energy from all of them is commingled, before it was sent to various out-of-state destinations. The Court held that this transfer and the commingling were sufficient to satisfy the interstate commerce requirements for the Commission's jurisdiction. Id. at 463, 92 S.Ct. 637. 29 In this case, the defendant has never disputed evidence that he used a cellular telephone to communicate with Detective Peterson and Deckard. As the district court found, it is clear from the testimony about the manner in which Weathers's cellular phone operated that Bell South Mobility was required to engage in interstate activities by sending a search signal to communications equipment in another state to locate Weathers's cellular telephone. Without that interstate search, the transmission of a telephone call to or from Weathers's cellular telephone would not have been possible. Thus, even though the signal that actually connected the two parties was ultimately intra state, inter state activities were required to make that connection possible. Hence, we conclude that the defendant's use of his cellular telephone was use of an instrumentality in interstate commerce. Accordingly, we conclude that the government established a factual basis for the court's jurisdiction under § 1958(a). 30 We would be remiss, however, if we failed to point out that the intent of Congress, as expressed in the inconsistent provisions in § 1958(a) and (b)(2), is far from clear. 2 Moreover, this lack of clarity has not only made resolution of the instant case unnecessarily difficult, but will pose even thornier questions as communications that appear to be carried on intra state are increasingly transmitted by satellite and other obviously interstate facilities. We can only express the hope that future amendments to the statute will obviate our current difficulty.