U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court Rules Against Fraud Defendant Fighting Deportation
Posted Jun 15, 2009, 08:48 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against an alien fighting his deportation on the ground that his bank fraud conviction wasn’t based on a statute requiring proof of losses above $10,000.
Immigration law provides that an alien may be deported for an aggravated felony, including crimes in which fraud exceeds $10,000. Manoj Nijhawan was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud, but none of the statutes required any specific loss to the victim, according to a summary at Oyez.org. At sentencing, Nijhawan stipulated that the loss exceeded $100 million.
He later argued he could not be deported since the $10,000 loss requirement was not an element of the crimes for which he was convicted.
The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, saying the facts could be litigated even when statutes don’t require a precise loss amount. “Petitioner and those in similar circumstances have at least one and possibly two opportunities to contest the amount of loss, the first at the earlier sentencing and the second at the deportation hearing itself,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a unanimous opinion (PDF) for the court.