Court Opinion

ID: 9467136
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:39:27.641388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:10.799045
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In United States v. Glynn, 627 F.2d 39 (7th Cir. 1980), I wrote a dissent on the question presented in Part I of the order in the case at bar. The dissent in pertinent part read:
I am unable to comprehend how the assets of the Supreme Electric Company could have been depleted when the payoffs made in Count I, $100.00, and in Count II, $125.00, were furnished by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Count IV presents the same situation; Lee Roy Harper, the owner of Harper’s Electric Company, made a payoff of $250.00 to the defendant with FBI funds.
The argument is made that Hobbs Act jurisdiction exists because they charge an attempt to affect commerce in contrast to actual impact; therefore, the source of the bribe money is irrelevant. The argument, although superficially plausible is, in truth, both untenable and illusory.
First, the facts are that more than a mere attempt was made to extort money from the contractors named in Counts I, II, and IV. The bribery negotiations between the contractors and the defendant were not frustrated or aborted; they culminated in actual payments of bribes. Even if it could be said that the initial negotiations constituted an attempt, they eventually merged into a completed transaction, the transfer of money.
But even viewing the facts as portraying only an attempt to affect commerce, as the Government asks us to do, the argument still fails. This is because any attempt to affect commerce was an impossibility when the monies offered and delivered to the defendant were Government funds rather than assets of the contractors. Conceptually, the transactions were illusory insofar as their having any possibility, let alone probability, of an effect on commerce. There was no possible risk that the contractors’ assets might be depleted.
The case here is different from one involving the attempted sale or actual sale of contraband, such as guns or drugs, when Government funds are used. There the contraband exists and constitutes an element vel non of the offense. Here an effect, actual or potential, on commerce (a necessary jurisdictional element of a Hobbs Act prosecution) did not exist nor could it have come into existence.
Finally, the statute reads in part: “Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays or affects commerce ..., by robbery or extortion or attempts ... so to do ... shall be fined ....” 18 U.S.C. § 1951. The statute does not cover “attempts” to affect commerce; it speaks only of “attempts” to rob or extort. Counts I, II, and IV charge that the defendant “did attempt to affect' commerce ... by extortion.. .. ” Thus these counts were fatally flawed to start with; they did not charge a crime under the statute.
At 43^44. For the reasons I expressed in the foregoing paragraphs, I dissent in the case here. I would reverse.