Court Opinion

ID: 9494329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:35:42.765328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:21.660923
License: Public Domain

DeMOSS, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the conclusion reached by the panel that our rule of orderliness and considerations of collegiality within the Court require our adherence to the Circuit precedents in Robinson. unless and until changed by an en banc decision. I write separately to advise the parties and the rest of the Court that, in due course after issuance of this opinion, I will timely hold the mandate and call for a ballot for en banc reconsideration. I will take this action for the following reasons:
1. I think it is unhealthy to have a Circuit precedent hanging by the slender thread of an en banc tie vote; and as a matter of Court policy we should work to reach a definitive conclusion, one way or the other, on that Circuit precedent as soon as possible.
2. In our en banc reconsideration in Hickman, we had before us only the Supreme Court decision in Lopez as a guide for testing the power of Congress under the Interstate Commerce clause to regulate intrastate activities. There are some commentators who think that Lopez was “an aberration” or “a single shot decision” or a “flash in the pan” or “was unlikely to be applied in any other context.” But the decision of the Supreme Court in Mom-son clearly shows that such characterizations are incorrect. In Morrison, the Supreme Court reaffirmed, readopted, and *560reapplied all of the key holdings of Lopez, particularly those relating to the third prong of Lopez giving Congress the power to regulate “activities which substantially affect interstate commerce.” I would hope, therefore, that some of my colleagues who concluded in Hickman that Lopez was not a sufficient basis for changing our Circuit precedent, would, in light of Morrison, at least be willing to reconsider that conclusion.
3. In two respects I would suggest that the language of Morrison directly undercuts the foundation of this Circuit’s precedent in Robinson. First of all, the Supreme Court stated:
We accordingly reject the argument that Congress may regulate non-economic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct’s aggregate effect on interstate commerce.
120 S.Ct. at 1754. Our Circuit precedent in Robinson stands or falls on the validity of its conclusion that the aggregate effect of all robberies on convenience stores may justify the application of the Hobbs Act to those robberies.
Secondly, in Morrison the Supreme Court undercut Robinson by stating:
Gender motivated crimes of violence are not in any sense of the phrase economic activity.
120 S.Ct. at 1751. This conclusion is similar to the one reached by the Supreme Court in Lopez where it held that possession of a gun in the vicinity of a school was not in any sense of the word an economic activity. In Morrison the Supreme Court went on to state:
Indeed, if Congress may regulate gender motivated violence, it would be able to regulate murder or any other type of violence since gender motivated violence, as a subset of all violent crime, is certain to have lesser economic impacts than the larger class of which it is a part.
120 S.Ct. at 1753. I can see no rational basis upon which the robberies perpetrated here in McFarland could be categorized as an “economic activity” in light of these statements from Morrison.
4. The last statement of the Supreme Court in Morrison which I think is particularly relevant to our decisions here in McFarland is:
The regulation and punishment of intrastate violence that is not directed at the instrumentalities, channels, or goods involved in interstate commerce, has always been the province of the states.
120 S.Ct. at 1754. It is beyond dispute that the retail convenience stores involved as victims of the robberies in this case were not instrumentalities or channels of interstate commerce. I would submit that the paper currency in the cash drawer of a cash register in one of these stores is not “goods involved in interstate commerce.” The currency in the cash drawer is money, a medium of exchange. The money gets in the cash drawer because a customer brings it in and exchanges that money for some “goods” which he desires to purchase.1 This purchase transaction is a sale to the ultimate consumer of those “goods or commodities” and is the final transaction by which those goods or commodities become the personal property of the purchaser and leave any channel of interstate commerce which they may have been in prior to that moment. Since McFarland took only cash from the cash drawer, I would suggest *561that his robbery was not directed at “goods involved in interstate commerce”; and, therefore, this language from Morrison gives us another basis upon which to distinguish this case.
5. Finally, I would urge the members of this Court to read again the dissent filed by Judge Higginbotham to the en banc tie vote decision in Hickman. 179 F.3d at 231 (Higginbotham, J., dissenting). This dissent is a comprehensive and masterful treatment of all of the various issues which have been raised as to when Congress may regulate activities under the third prong of Lopez, which “substantially affect interstate commerce.” While Judge Higginbotham’s dissent was written one year prior to the Supreme Court decision in Morrison, you will be surprised on rereading to see how comfortably his analysis, reasoning and language fit on the aegis of the language of the Supreme Court in Morrison.

. This distinction between "goods” and "money” is recognized by the Uniform Commercial Code which defines "goods” as “all things (including specially manufactured goods) which are moveable at the time of identification of the contract for sale other than the money in which the price is to be paid ." U.C.C. § 2-105 (emphasis added).