SCOTUS consults Dickens and Austen for meaning of 'accompany,' affirms bank robber's conviction
The U.S. Supreme Court cited Charles Dickens and Jane Austen in an opinion on Monday that considered the meaning of “accompany.”
The court said a federal law that increases penalties when a fleeing bank robber “forces any person to accompany him” applies even if the bank robber forces the person to move only from one room to another.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the unanimous opinion (PDF) for the court in the case of North Carolina defendant Larry Whitfield, who entered the home of a 79-year-old woman after a botched bank robbery and guided her from the hallway to a computer room. The woman suffered a fatal heart attack.
Congress enacted the law in 1934 after a spate of bank robberies by John Dillinger and others, Scalia said. At the time, “to accompany” someone meant to “go with” him, and did not connote movement over a substantial distance, Scalia said.
“English literature is replete with examples,” Scalia said, citing sentences from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. The Volokh Conspiracy noted the reference.
Whitfield forced the elderly woman to accompany him for at least several feet, Scalia said. “That surely sufficed” under the law, which carries a minimum penalty of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life, Scalia said.
The case is Whitfield v. United States.
Scalia quotation corrected on Jan. 27 to state that English literature is “replete” with examples.
