You don’t need unwitting party for conspiracy conviction, SCOTUS says
In an opinion addressing a suburban Baltimore body shop that gave kickbacks to police officers who referred drivers with damaged cars, the U.S. Supreme court on Monday found in a 5-3 ruling that although the defendant, a police officer, did not try to take anything from third parties, he could still be convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion under the Hobbs Act.
Several times between 2009 and 2011, according to the opinion (PDF) in Ocasio v. United States, Samuel Ocasio while on duty encouraged auto accident victims to take their cars to the Majestic Auto Repair Shop. The shop reportedly paid police officers between $150 and $300 for each referral. In 2012, Ocasio was convicted of three counts of extortion and one count of conspiracy. His attorneys argued that he could not be charged with conspiring with the owners to get the payments, the Associated Press reports, because a conspiracy conviction would need proof that they tried to extort property from a third party.
The majority writing, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, found that because Ocasio as a public officer reached an agreement with shop owners to get cash payments, the conviction could stand. He was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
“In order to establish the existence of a conspiracy to violate the Hobbs Act, the government has no obligation to demonstrate that each conspirator agreed personally to commit—or was even capable of committing—the substantive offense of Hobbs Act extortion,” Alito wrote. “It is sufficient to prove that the conspirators agreed that the underlying crime be committed by a member of the conspiracy who was capable of committing it.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent.
“Under a correct understanding of Hobbs Act extortion, it is illogical and wrong to say that two people conspired to extort one of themselves. As explained, in a Hobbs Act extortion case, the only perpetrator is the public official; the payor is a victim and not a participant.”
Another dissent was authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts. Her writing also disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of the Hobbs Act. When conspirators want to extort something from someone, she reasoned, they frequently look for victims outside their group.
“But in upholding the conspiracy conviction here, the court interprets the phrase extorting property ‘from another’ in the Hobbs Act contrary to that natural understanding,” Sotomayor wrote. “It holds that a group of conspirators can agree to obtain property ‘from another’ in violation of the act even if they agree only to transfer property among themselves. That is not a natural or logical way to interpret the phrase ‘from another.’ I respectfully dissent.”
