Opinion ID: 222099
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Intrastate Use of Automobile

Text: Counts One and Six were based on Mandel's use of an automobile in furtherance of the murder for hire scheme. Count One was based on the encounter of August 28, 2008, when Mandel met Dwyer and drove him to another G & D job site and discussed the prospect of having Antoniou killed while in the car and upon arrival at the job site. Count Six was premised on the encounter of November 25, 2008, when Mandel drove Dwyer past Antoniou's home to discuss where and how the murder should be committed. Mandel does not suggest that he was entrapped into using his automobile in connection with the scheme. Nor does he dispute that an automobile, as a means of transportation, constitutes a facility of interstate commerce for purposes of the federal murder for hire statute. § 1958(b)(2). His contention, rather, is that the intrastate use of a personal automobile falls outside of Congress's Commerce Clause power and thus cannot form the basis for a federal charge. This argument was not made at any point in the proceedings below. Consequently, our review is for plain error alone. See United States v. Williams, 410 F.3d 397, 400 (7th Cir.2005) (applying plain-error review to forfeited Commerce Clause challenge to defendant's conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)). We find no plain error in convicting Mandel under section 1958 based on his intrastate use of a private automobile. The Constitution's Commerce Clause permits Congress to regulate three broad categories of activity: (1) use of the channels of interstate commerce: (2) the instrumentalities of commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce; and (3) activities that substantially affect commerce. United States v. Lopez, supra, 514 U.S. at 558-59, 115 S.Ct. at 1629-30. The federal murder for hire statute is aimed at the second of these categories, and specifically prohibits (as relevant here) use of the instrumentalities of interstate commerce with the intent that a murder be committed for financial or other remuneration. § 1958(a); United States v. Richeson, supra, 338 F.3d at 659. Facilities of interstate commerce are defined to include means of transportation as well as communication, § 1958(b)(2), and as we have noted, Mandel does not dispute that a car is a means of transportation as the term is defined for purposes of section 1958. The statute, as Mandel all but concedes, does not require that a facility of interstate commerce actually be used in interstate commerce. This was a point that we settled in Richeson. As it was worded at that time, the statute proscribed the use of a facility in interstate commerce (rather than a facility of interstate or foreign commerce, as the statute now reads) in furtherance of a murder for hire scheme. The defendant contended that his intrastate telephone calls, although employing a facility of interstate commerce as defined by section 1958, was not a use of such a facility in interstate or foreign commerce. We rejected the notion that the facility must actually have been employed in interstate commerce in order to bring the defendant's conduct within the reach of the statute: We believe there is only one way to reach the plain language of the murder-for-hire statute, and that is to require that the facility, and not its use, be in interstate or foreign commerce. We wholly agree with the Fifth Circuit that § 1958's construction, plain language, context in the realm of commerce clause jurisprudence, and legislative history all lead to the conclusion that it is sufficient [under § 1958] that the defendant used an interstate commerce facility in an intra state fashion. Marek, 238 F.3d at 315. This reading of the statute makes sense from both a logical and legal standpoint; as noted in Marek, even the title of the statute, Use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, shows that Congress intended interstate commerce to modify facility and not use. Id., 238 F.3d at 321. Moreover, even if the language of § 1958 was ambiguous (we believe it is not), the statute's history indicates that Congress sought to punish contract killings pursuant to its authority to regulate the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, identified in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 558, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), as one of three broad categories of conduct appropriately regulated by Congress using its commerce power. . . . 338 F.3d at 660-61 (emphasis in original). Accord United States v. Nowak, 370 Fed. Appx. 39, 44-45 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 1910, 179 L.Ed.2d 969 (2010) (nonprecedential decision) (plain-error review); United States v. Howard, 540 F.3d 905, 908 (8th Cir.2008); United States v. Means, 297 Fed.Appx. 755, 758-59 (10th Cir.2008) (nonprecedential decision); United States v. Thomas, 282 Fed.Appx. 244, 246 (4th Cir.2008) (nonprecedential decision); United States v. Perez, 414 F.3d 302, 304-05 (2d Cir. 2005). As the Eleventh Circuit pointed out in United States v. Drury, 396 F.3d 1303, 1311 (11th Cir.2005), when Congress later amended section 1958 in 2004 to substitute the words facility of for facility in, any doubt on this subject was resolved: This amendment makes absolutely clear that § 1958 establishes federal jurisdiction whenever any `facility of interstate commerce' is used in the commission of a murder for hire offense, regardless of whether the use is interstate in nature . . . or purely intrastate in nature. . . . As applied to Mandel's intrastate use of his automobile, the statute does not plainly exceed the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause authority. Lopez recognizes that Congress may regulate the facilities and instrumentalities of interstate commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities. 514 U.S. at 558, 115 S.Ct. at 1629. Thus, as we observed in Richeson, [W]hen Congress elects to regulate under the second prong of Lopez, `federal jurisdiction is supplied by the nature of the instrumentality or facility used, not by separate proof of interstate movement.' 338 F.3d at 660-61 (quoting Marek, 238 F.3d at 317). Automobiles are designed to move people and goods over distances both long and short, and as such they play a crucial role in interstate commerce. As the Third Circuit observed in considering the constitutionality of the federal carjacking statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2119: Instrumentalities differ from other objects that affect commerce because they are used as a means of transporting goods and people across state lines. Trains and planes are inherently mobile; highways and bridges, though static, are critical to the movement of automobiles. It would be anomalous, therefore, to recognize these categories of instrumentalities but to suggest that the similarly mobile automobile is not also an instrumentality of interstate commerce. United States v. Bishop, 66 F.3d 569, 588 (3d Cir.1995). See also United States v. Cobb, supra, 144 F.3d at 322 (Wilkinson, J.) (The fact that not every car, train, or plane trip has an interstate destination has never been thought to remove these means of transportation from the category of instrumentalities of commerce. Cars, like trains and aircraft, are both inherently mobile and indispensable to the interstate movement of persons and goods.). Mandel's contrary position, that a private automobile must actually be used in interstate commerce in order for it to come within the scope of the commerce power, is not wholly without support. The Eleventh Circuit, in Garcia v. Vanguard Car Rental USA, Inc., 540 F.3d 1242, 1249-50 (11th Cir.2008), declined to sustain the Graves Amendment, 49 U.S.C. § 30106, which shields car rental and leasing firms from vicarious liability for injuries to persons or property arising from their customers' use of the lent vehicles, as a valid regulation of instrumentalities of interstate commerce. The court was concerned that if a car's status as an instrumentality of interstate commerce were by itself sufficient to support the exercise of the commerce power, there would be no limit to the aspects of automobile use that Congress could regulate. If cars are always instrumentalities of interstate commerce. . . Congress would have plenary power not only over the commercial rental car market, but over many aspects of automobile use including such quintessentially state law matters as traffic rules and licensing drivers. Id. at 1250. The court instead upheld the statute on the basis of the third category of activities identified in Lopez : activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Id. at 1251-53. For similar reasons, the late Judge Edward R. Becker dissented from the Third Circuit's decision in Bishop, noting that whereas rail, plane, and commercial truck traffic is almost always commercial in character, the use of private automobiles is often neither interstate nor commercial; the mere fact that private cars can be used in interstate commerce thus was insufficient, in his view, to justify the exercise of the commerce power. 66 F.3d at 598. But these citations merely demonstrate a difference of opinion as to the reach of federal authority vis-à-vis automobiles, not plain error. Our own decision in Richeson, although it resolved a statutory rather than a constitutional argument, supports Mandel's convictions on Counts 1 and 6, and certainly cases such as Marek and Bishop, which rejected the very constitutional argument that Mandel is making, do so. His conviction cannot be deemed plainly erroneous given the state of the law on this subject. See United States v. Aslan, 644 F.3d 526, 548-50 (7th Cir.2011); United States v. Gibson, 530 F.3d 606, 612 (7th Cir.2008); United States v. Stott, 245 F.3d 890, 900 (7th Cir.2001).