Court Opinion

ID: 9474059
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:46:51.720204+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:52.900085
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
In this case, which in view of the amount involved and the limited effect on interstate commerce hardly seems to be a proper candidate for the exercise of federal court jurisdiction, I am required to dissent. I do not believe that any of the tests for proving inducement set forth in O’Grady was met. United States v. O’Grady, 742 F.2d 682 (2d Cir.1984). Campo’s receipt of, at most, ten payments, $25 each in amount, spread over a one-year period did not justify “a finding of repeated acceptances over a period of time of substantial benefits (i.e., benefits of a nature and magnitude which reasonably could affect a public official’s exercise of his or her duties).” Id. at 694 (Pierce, J., concurring). If the payments accepted by Campo were deemed “substantial,” any public employee who periodically accepts relatively small gratuities — e.g., a mailman at Christmas — will be exposed to the heavy penal sanctions of the Hobbs Act, even in the absence of any proof that those gratuities were solicited in any fashion or that they affected the official’s behavior. While other penalties may be appropriate, clearly the Hobbs Act was not meant to cover such de minimis violations.
In the absence of receipt of substantial benefits, the critical question under O’Grady is whether there was a quid pro quo furnished, see O’Grady, 742 F.2d at 691-93, and I do not see how such can legitimately be inferred. In this case, there is no evidence that indicates, “that those who gave, profited, and those who did not, lost.” Id. at 692. There is instead evidence, including Campo’s testimony, that indicates that the payments did not lead the officer to patrol his sectors in a way that either aided the disco or harmed the rest of the sectors through neglect. Duty required that the street, which was one of the two areas in the sector that were very busy after midnight, be regularly patrolled and carefully monitored. Campo and his partner continued to patrol the rest of their sectors. They never parked on the street on which the disco was located. They stopped on the street only to conduct police business, such as to ticket illegally parked cars (except, to be sur.e, to receive their nightly payments). The officers continued to patrol the street after they stopped accepting those payments. According to Campo’s partner, neither he nor Campo asked for, demanded, or requested a payment from Angelo.
The only evidence that suggests the existence of a quid pro quo is that Angelo refused to pay the officers on a night on which they had not spent enough time on the street to satisfy him. That action, however, must be set in the broader context of a situation in which there was no evidence that Campo “asked for or demanded benefits, that he offered quid pro quo in exchange for benefits, that he forestalled official action in anticipation of receiving ben*570efits, or that he misused his public office in any way.” Id. at 692. In that context, Angelo’s actions look more like (perhaps illegal) gratuities than extorted payments. Angelo rewarded the police officers when their compliance with their official duties led them to act in a way that benefited him; when their compliance with their duties did not benefit him, he did not reward them. All that the evidence in this case proves, then, is that Campo received money with the knowledge that “his office was the motivation behind the giving of the benefits,” id. at 687, and, as we held in O’Grady, that does not constitute a violation of the Hobbs Act, see id. There was in short insufficient evidence to justify conviction for wrongful use of the power of office to induce payment or to cause benefit to the payor. See id. at 689, 691-92.