Court Opinion

ID: 9492017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:30:12.867301+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:04.045773
License: Public Domain

BIRCH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, in which TJOFLAT, ANDERSON and BARKETT, Circuit Judges, join:
I respectfully dissent. The majority’s holding will result in the federalization of any crime involving extortion to acquire money. Plainly stated, “[t]his is a case about federalism.”1 If we were to accept the government’s position on this issue, the Hobbs Act would completely subsume state extortion and robbery laws by creating a federal criminal offense in each and every case in which the pay-off is at all likely to cross state lines. Surely, Congress cannot have intended any such result.
The plain and unambiguous language of the statute draws a distinction between extortion that affects commerce and extortion that constitutes or produces commerce.2 Although Congress has the power to criminalize both types of extortion, the Hobbs Act addresses only the former.
The most convincing argument that the majority’s sweeping interpretation must be wrong is the fact that the government and the courts have undertaken what is often a searching inquiry to find how the crime in question affected the victim’s ability to conduct business. More specifically, in all the extortion cases available for examination, the courts have searched for some *1359such effect on commerce even though money, the most common form of extortion proceeds, is uniquely likely to enter interstate commerce. If establishing jurisdiction under the Hobbs Act were as easy as showing a likelihood that the proceeds would travel in interstate commerce, surely the government and the courts historically would not have gone to the effort to establish alternative (and often tenuous) connections to commerce.
Finally, I note that in a similar line of authority that has developed in the case law applying the analogous language of the federal arson statute we have taken a different tack. That statute criminalizes the destruction of “any building, vehicle, or other real or personal property used in interstate or foreign commerce or in any activity affecting interstate or foreign commerce .... ” 18 U.S.C. § 844(i) (emphasis added). In Russell v. United States, 471 U.S. 858, 105 S.Ct. 2455, 85 L.Ed.2d 829 (1985), the Supreme Court held that the statute required the targeted property to have some connection to business: “In sum, the legislative history suggests that Congress at least intended to protect all business property, as well as some additional property that might not fit that description [namely police stations and churches], but perhaps not every private home.” Id. at 862, 105 S.Ct. at 2457. In applying section 844(i) we have gone to lengths to connect the destroyed property with interstate commerce and have held the line against making every act of arson a federal crime. Compare United States v. Grimes, 142 F.3d 1342 (11th Cir.1998), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 119 S.Ct. 840, 142 L.Ed.2d 695 (1999) (finding jurisdiction over arson involving commercial rental properties) with United States v. Denalli, 73 F.3d 328 (11th Cir.) (per curiam), modified by 90 F.3d 444 (11th Cir.1996) (per curiam) (no jurisdiction under section 844(i) for arson involving a private residence). Since we have taken the required connection to commerce seriously in the section 844(i) context, it is inconsistent for us to further dilute the jurisdictional requirement under the Hobbs Act ... and that is what the majority opinion accomplishes today. The heretofore clearly marked channel of the stream of commerce has been muddied which will likely result in a flood of former state extortion cases into the already drowning federal court system.

. The phrase belongs to Justice O'Connor, see Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 726, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 2552, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991), but a recent decision of our own court (which found federal jurisdiction under the Hobbs Act) raised the same concerns and cautioned against interpreting the Act in a manner that would "obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a completely centralized government.” United States v. Paredes, 139 F.3d 840, 844 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 119 S.Ct. 572, 142 L.Ed.2d 476 (1998)(quoting United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 557, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 1628-29, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995)).

. Two cases arising under the robbery prong of the Hobbs Act may help demonstrate this distinction in cases involving individual victims. In United States v. Flores, 855 F.Supp. 638 (S.D.N.Y.1994), the defendant had assaulted two victims as they entered their apartment and robbed them of $4000. After noting the defendant’s characterization of the event as a "garden variety” robbery, the court found an affect on commerce because the money represented the proceeds of the victims’ flower business and was to have been deposited in a business account. By contrast, in United States v. Quigley, 53 F.3d 909, 910 (8th Cir.1995), the defendants spotted their victims walking along the road at night, offered them a ride, and proceeded to rob them of all they had: "eighty cents and a near-empty pouch of chewing tobacco.” The government unsuccessfully advanced a number of theories to provide the required effect on commerce, including the fact that the victims were in the process of procuring beer. The court, however, did not discuss the fact that the defendants could have moved or spent their ill-gotten gains in interstate commerce and concluded that the government had not established federal jurisdiction.