Court Opinion

ID: 9495585
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:06:26.53828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:06.219806
License: Public Domain

F.I. PARKER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part.
Although I join most of the majority’s opinion, I do not believe there was sufficient evidentiary support for the Hobbs Act conviction on the counts involving the attempted theft of money from the Montoya residence which prevents me from joining the majority’s analysis of Counts One and Two. While I agree that this Court requires only a de minimis connection with interstate commerce to establish federal jurisdiction under the Hobbs Act, I cannot, on the facts before the Court, infer even such a slight commercial impact from the defendant’s involvement in the Montoya situation without extending our existing precedent beyond its logical bounds.
I.
The Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951 provides in pertinent part:
(a) Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, or commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in *560violation of this section shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
(b) As used in this section—
(3) The term “commerce” means commerce within the District of Columbia, or any Territory or Possession of the United States; all commerce between any point in a State, Territory, Possession, or the District of Columbia and any point outside thereof; all commerce between points within the same States through any place outside such State; and all other commerce over which the United States has jurisdiction.
18 U.S.C. § 1951. As the majority clearly recognizes, this Court, while finding proof of an affect on interstate commerce critical to the establishment of federal jurisdiction in a Hobbs Act case, requires only a de minimis showing of that affect, recognizing connections to commerce even where the connections are delayed, indirect, or slight. United States v. Jamison, 299 F.3d 114, 118 (2d Cir.2002); United States v. Arena, 180 F.3d 380, 389 (2d Cir.1999), cert. denied 531 U.S. 811, 121 S.Ct. 33, 148 L.Ed.2d 13 (2000); United States v. Jones, 30 F.3d 276, 285 (2d Cir.1994). The government must demonstrate only the possibility of an affect on interstate commerce, not an actual affect to meet this standard, United States v. Shareef 190 F.3d 71, 75 (2d Cir.1999), and frequently may establish a tie to interstate commerce even when the conduct creating the affect is illegal, see, e.g., Jones, 30 F.3d at 286.
The majority finds little to distinguish the attempted robbery of Montoya’s home in Queens, the conduct described in Counts One and Two, from the successful robbery of Veraz’s Bronx residence, the conduct described in Counts Three and Four. Noting that, in its view, the goal of the robbery attempt at Montoya’s residence was to obtain “drug proceeds,” the majority finds that as both drug dealing and loansharking have an effect on interstate commerce, Hobbs Act jurisdiction may attach on all four counts. While I would firmly agree with this analysis of Counts One and Two if there were any evidentiary support for the notion that the goal of the attempted robbery had been to obtain “drug proceeds,” I ■ cannot join the majority in good conscience where the evidence at trial showed the goal of the robbery was not to obtain drug proceeds at all.
II.
The majority explains that “Taveras ... testified he and Fabian intended to steal $300,000 in drug proceeds when they targeted Gomez for robbery.” The cited testimony, however, reveals no such intent. Taveras testified as follows:
Q The belief ... was that the money had been stolen by the guy, you didn’t know his name was Montoya, but Montoya had ripped off some drug guys in Florida, is that basically the understanding?
A Yes.
Q So the thieves were going to rip off another thief; is that fair to say?
A Yes.
Q You were going t[o] rip off one thief by another group of thieves, that was it?
A Yes, sir.
As the testimony shows, the intent of the robbers was not to obtain the proceeds of a drug deal as the majority’s label seems to imply, but rather to obtain the proceeds *561of a theft.1 While the victims of the original theft may have been Miami drug dealers, the defendants viewed the money in Montoya’s hands not as “drug proceeds” but as “robbery proceeds.” On this seemingly minor distinction, the jurisdiction in this case turns.
This Court has found that the robbery of a potential purchaser of drugs depletes the assets of the purchaser and prevents completion of the drug transaction, thereby affecting interstate commerce. Jones, 30 F.3d at 285. Similarly, it has found that the robbery of an individual illegally trafficking cocaine from his home depletes the “working capital” of the cocaine operation and thus affects the individual’s continued participation in (albeit illegal) interstate commerce. Jamison, 299 F.3d at 121; see United States v. Parker, 165 F.Supp.2d 431, 464-65 (W.D.N.Y.2001) (finding impact on interstate commerce under Jones where defendants conspired to rob and extort money from persons they believed to be drug dealers); see also United States v. Peterson, 236 F.3d 848, 855 (7th Cir.2001) (rejecting Hobbs Act jurisdiction when government failed to demonstrate that robbery of victim’s marijuana trade involved drugs that originated out of state). Nevertheless, neither this Court, nor any other court, has found that a robbery of a person who robbed a drug dealer may support a similar depletion-of-assets theory. The secondary robbery does not in any way deplete the assets of the originally victimized drug dealer so as to create an impact on interstate commerce justifying Hobbs Act jurisdiction. The first robbery has already done that. Nor does the second robbery independently impact interstate commerce purely through depletion of the previously successful robber’s illegally gained assets.
Although this Court has found that interference with interstate trade in narcotics, while illegal, may impact interstate commerce, it has not made a similar finding that interference with interstate robbery is itself a basis of Hobbs Act jurisdiction. The Fifth and Sixth Circuits have found Hobbs Act jurisdiction based on the robbery of an individual’s assets only where the individual robbed is a regular actor in interstate commerce or can be specifically shown to have intended to use the funds stolen for interstate commerce, where the robbery forces the victim to deplete the assets of an interstate entity (for instance a bank) to compensate for the crime, or where the amount of money or number of people affected is so large as to have an inevitable interstate impact. See United States v. Turner, 272 F.3d 380, 387 (6th Cir.2001) (examining robbery of home of an operator of an illegal gambling operation); United States v. Collins, 40 F.3d 95, 100 (5th Cir.1995) (examining robbery of individual who worked for an interstate corporation). The defendants’ objective in this case — to steal money they believed Montoya had himself stolen — does not fit any of these guidelines. The government did not successfully demonstrate that Montoya was a regular actor in interstate commerce, that he intended to use the stolen funds in interstate commerce, or that he would seek to “compensate” for the loss of funds by turning to a bank or other financial institution for relief.2 The government *562also failed to show that the amount of money targeted was sufficiently large to have an inevitable impact on interstate commerce. Furthermore, even if interference with interstate robbery, like interference with interstate drug dealing, were considered interference with interstate commerce under the Hobbs Act, the government presented no evidence that the theft of the proceeds of Montoya’s recent robbery would somehow deplete the assets of Montoya’s robbery operation, crippling his ability to rob other victims, drug dealers or otherwise, in the future.
The majority attempts to avoid these potential hurdles by citing this Court’s decision in United States v. Rosa, 17 F.3d 1531, 1546 (2d Cir.1994) for the principle that a “jurisdictional nexus for federal prosecution” for conspiracy is established where any member of the conspiracy believes the targeted goods were traveling from out of state. Even if Rosa, a case concerning conspiracy to receive stolen goods, were determinative of the jurisdictional rules for the Hobbs Act, the majority neglects the absence of a “good” from which to derive interstate movement in this case. In the belief of Fabian and the others attempting the robbery, the only thing that moved interstate, was the money Montoya supposedly stole from Miami drug dealers. As the Seventh Circuit has explicitly stated, however, the fact that money involved in a crime has traveled across state lines cannot alone support a finding of Hobbs Act jurisdiction. See Peterson, 236 F.3d at 853 (citing United States v. Paredes, 139 F.3d 840, 844 n. 3 (11th Cir.1998)). Without evidence that the robbery of Montoya’s assets would deplete the assets of a business or individual involved in interstate commerce, the fact that the money targeted allegedly originated in Miami cannot support a finding of Hobbs Act jurisdiction. Simply put, the government failed to show that the attempted robbery of an alleged robber affected interstate commerce within the meaning of the Hobbs Act. In the face of such a failure, the majority’s attempt to dismiss the attempted robbery as an attempt to obtain drug proceeds is a dangerous oversimplification of the facts and a dramatic extension of the law.
III.
The majority hinges Hobbs Act jurisdiction on the defendants’ pre-attempt belief that they were about to steal “drug proceeds.” The defendants, however, expressed their belief in quite another way:
Q So the thieves were going to rip off another thief; is that fair to say?
A Yes.
Q You were going t[o] rip off one thief by another group of thieves, that was it?
A Yes, sir.
The attempted robbery in this case did not target the proceeds of a drug deal or the assets of a drug dealer. It instead targeted the money of a person the intended robbers believed to be a thief. Although the victim of the attempted robbery (Montoya) had himself potentially interfered with interstate commerce by depleting the assets of Miami drug dealers, the attempted robbery of Montoya did not further deplete the assets of Montoya’s original victims. Furthermore, as explained above, the depletion of Montoya’s assets had no independent impact on interstate commerce.
The majority calls the money targeted in the attempted robbery “drug proceeds.” Absent this misnomer, however, the majority’s analysis of Counts One and Two fails. Uncomfortable skimming over the secondary nature of the defendants’ attempted *563robbery and unwilling, without comment, to declare robbing a robber a federal crime, I respectfully dissent.

. Taveras agreed on cross-examination that the defendants believed Montoya would be unable to take action after the robbery because he was incarcerated and that his wife, Gomez, would not alert anyone, much less seek to replace the funds, because she would be unable to account for the presence of the money.