Court Opinion

ID: 9472562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:04:02.439058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:00.786799
License: Public Domain

PIERCE, Circuit Judge, with whom FEINBERG, Chief Judge, IRVING R. KAUFMAN, JON O. NEWMAN, KEARSE, CARDAMONE, WINTER and GEORGE C. PRATT, Circuit Judges, join,
concurring.
I concur in the majority opinion and in its holding that inducement is an essential element of the crime of extortion in a Hobbs Act prosecution and, therefore, that the district court erred in instructing the jury that “[t]he Government need not show that the defendant in words or otherwise, induced, requested, demanded, or solicited the benefits” received. I write separately, however, to emphasize that where warranted by the evidence, as herein, the jury should be permitted to infer inducement by the defendant based upon 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).
The majority opinion recognizes that inducement “can take many forms, some more subtle than others.” My concern is that while in some cases there may be express inducement, in other cases, it may be implied. The issue. of whether there exists inducement, express or implied, must be determined by the fact-finder, here a jury. In this case, the jury instruction was erroneous because in effect it mandated an inference of inducement merely upon a finding of acceptance of benefits with knowledge of the donor’s motivation. Given a correct instruction, however, the jury would have been free, if it chose to do so, to infer inducement from a finding of repeated acceptances over a period of time of substantial benefits. Such an instruction would recognize that the repeated acceptances of such benefits could, although it need not necessarily, constitute a communicative act amounting to inducement by implication. In short, given a proper charge, the jury could find that such continued acceptances of unwarranted' benefits served to communicate a message inducing such benefits and, thus, constituted extortionate misuse of the power of public office.