Brief filed: 03/04/2013
Documents
Sekhar v. United States
United States Supreme Court; Case No. 12-357
Prior Decision
Decision below 683 F.3d 436 (2d Cir. 2012).
Question Presented
Whether the “recommendation” of an attorney, who is a salaried employee of a governmental agency, in a single instance, is intangible property that can be the subject of an extortion attempt under 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) (the Hobbs Act) and 18 U.S.C. § 875(d).
Argument(s)
This Court has repeatedly applied the rule of lenity and other tools of statutory interpretation to limit prosecutors’ expansive applications of federal criminal statutes. This Court has required a clear statement from Congress before it will interpret a federal criminal statute to shift the federal-state balance in law enforcement. This case implicates the concerns that have caused this Court to interpret criminal statutes narrowly.
Author(s)
John D. Cline and Jennifer M. French, Law Office of John D. Cline, San Francisco, CA; David M. Porter, Sacramento, CA; Timothy Lynch and Ilya Shapiro, The Cato Institute, Washington, DC.
