Court Opinion

ID: 9466952
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:33:47.543082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:04.086923
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I dissent from the affirmance of the conviction with respect to several counts in the indictment.
I
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 as to these counts 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 *44be 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.G. § 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.
II
With respect to Count VI through Count X and Count XXI through Count XXXII, involving payments to the defendant by Klaudijus Pumputis, part-owner of the M & P Electric Company, there was no' evidence of an effect on interstate commerce. Pumputis testified that when payments were made to the defendant, it was the customer’s money that was being paid through M & P.
I cannot understand how this “passing on” of the bribe monies to the customers could possibly have depleted the contractor’s assets. The contractor, not his customers, was engaging in commerce, and the passing on of the bribe monies prevented any depletion of the contractor’s assets. Additionally, there was no direct testimony, unlike the case where James Kelly added the cost of the bribe to the customer’s bill, that the payments were made to avoid receiving defect notices.*
This case illustrates the cavalier posture that Government attorneys take in prosecuting extortions under the Hobbs Act when the conduct is essentially local in character. There seems to be no attenuation imaginable that will bar jurisdiction in a Hobbs Act case if the one who is extorted is engaged in some commercial transaction, however chimerical the interstate commerce aspect of the transaction.

 I have grave doubts about the validity of the alternative ground advanced by the majority for affirmance, namely, the avoidance of additional work or repairs by payment of the bribe. However, I do not dissent on that point.