We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
THE WORLD KEEPS ON TURNING
The Supreme Court handed down a pair of cases last week, neither of which even mentioned the coronavirus. It reminds us that the world goes on.
In Kelly v. United States, the Court reversed the conviction of a couple of former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s assistants, who had shut down some lanes on the George Washington Bridge to mess with Fort Lee, New Jersey. The Fort Lee mayor refused to support Gov. Christie’s re-election, and the pair decided they would back up bridge traffic coming from Fort Lee to teach the mayor a lesson.
The scheme was found out, and the U.S. Attorney brought wire fraud charges. The pair was convicted.
This was another great example of government overreach. The Supreme Court has previously said wire fraud must involve property. Here, the government argued that the defendants deprived motorists of the property right to use all lanes on the bridge, and cost the Port Authority – which runs the bridge – money the hire extra toll-takers.
The Supreme Court didn’t buy it. “The property must play more than some bit part in a scheme: It must be an ‘object of the fraud’,” the Court ruled. “A property fraud conviction cannot stand when the loss to the victim is only an incidental byproduct of the scheme… The time and labor of Port Authority employees were just the implementation costs of the defendants’ scheme to reallocate the Bridge’s access lanes. Or said another way, the labor costs were an incidental (even if foreseen) byproduct of their regulatory object… Every regulatory decision requires the use of some employee labor. But that does not mean every scheme to alter a regulation has that labor as its object. The defendants’ plan aimed to impede access from Ft Lee to the George Washington Bridge. The cost of the employee hours spent on implementing that plan was its incidental byproduct.”
The unanimous court warned that “Federal prosecutors may not use property fraud statutes to set standards of disclosure and good government for local and state officials.”
The other case – United States v. Sineneng-Smith – is noteworthy for the court’s slapping down of the 9th Circuit. A defendant convicted of encouraging illegal immigration argued the statute – 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A) – violated her 1st Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals wanted the parties to argue a different issue, however, and on its own assigned some amici (friends of the court) to argue the different issue.
The Supreme Court reversed. “The Nation’s adversarial adjudication system follows the principle of party presentation,” the Court said. “In both civil and criminal cases, we rely on the parties to frame the issues for decision and assign to courts the role of neutral
The Supremes admitted that a court is not “hidebound by counsel’s precise arguments, but the Ninth Circuit’s radical transformation of this case goes well beyond the pale.”
Kelly v. United States, Case No. 18-1059, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 2640 (May 7, 2020)
United States v. Sineneng-Smith, Case No. 19-67, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 2639 (May 7, 2020)
– Thomas L. Root