Opinion ID: 22760
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Marek

Text: 4 The facts are not in dispute. Defendant-Appellant Betty Louise Marek pleaded guilty to paying an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a hit-man, to murder her boyfriend's paramour. Marek was arrested after she used Western Union to transfer $500 to the putative hit-man. Marek initiated the wire transfer in Houston, Texas, and it was received in Harlingen, Texas. The government introduced no evidence to show that the Western Union transmission actually crossed the Texas state line en route from Houston to Harlingen, so we must assume that it did not. 8 5 After the district court had accepted Marek's guilty plea and subsequently sentenced her, she appealed her conviction, urging that the district court erred when it found that she had admitted to facts that satisfied each legal element of the crime charged. Convinced that Western Union is a facility in interstate commerce, and that this phrase is synonymous with interstate commerce facility, a divided panel of this court affirmed her conviction, holding that Marek's wholly intrastate use of Western Union was sufficient to satisfy the jurisdictional element of §1958. 9