Supreme Court of the United States · 2005-04-26
Case and law context
Role: applied; posture: criminal; jury convictions for wire fraud (scheme to smuggle liquor into Canada without paying Canadian excise taxes); motion to dismiss indictment denied; CA4 panel reversed, en banc CA4 affirmed; certiorari on whether a plot to defraud a foreign government of tax revenue violates 1343; result: claimant-won; claim:
Instances and excluded annotation blocks
| Case | Element | Holding and scope | Variant | Exact source quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /us/544/0349-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 | Traditional money or property as an object | satisfied Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: proved An uncollected tax debt is property in the taxing government's hands (money legally due = money in hand); distinguished from Cleveland's purely regulatory interest in an unissued licence. That the victim is a foreign sovereign makes no difference. | entitlement-to-money/foreign-government-excise-tax-evaded-by-smuggling | Uncontested evidence at trial showed that Canadian taxes then due on alcohol purchased in the United States and transported to Canada were approximately double the liquor’s purchase. price.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [1527:1716] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.Had petitioners complied with this legal obligation, they would have paid money to Canada.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [5745:5835] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.Here, by contrast, the Government alleged and proved that petitioners’ scheme aimed at depriving Canada of money to which it was entitled by law.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [8324:8469] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.Valuable entitlements like these are “property” as that term ordinarily is employed.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [5362:5446] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.The right to be paid money has long been thought to be a species of property.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [6239:6316] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.Taking the latter element first, Canada’s right to uncollected excise taxes on the liquor petitioners imported into Canada is “property” in its hands.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [4982:5132] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693. |
| /us/544/0349-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 | Scheme or artifice to defraud | satisfied Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: proved Hiding goods and not declaring them is treated as an implied representation to customs that there was nothing to declare. The common-law revenue rule does not carve tax-evasion schemes against foreign sovereigns out of "scheme to defraud" (Part III), and the prosecution is a domestic, not extraterritorial, application (Part IV). | concealment-as-misrepresentation/undeclared-goods-smuggled-past-customs | They employed Hilts and others to drive the liquor over the Canadian border, without paying the required excise taxes.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [964:1082] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.The drivers avoided paying taxes by hiding the liquor in their vehicles and failing to declare the goods to Canadian customs officials.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [1089:1224] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.The evidence showed that petitioners routinely concealed imported liquor from Canadian officials and failed to declare those goods on customs forms.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [8852:9000] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.Their offense was complete the moment they executed the scheme inside the United States; “[t]he wire fraud statute punishes the scheme, not its success.”Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [29931:30084] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.This, then, was a scheme “designed to defraud by representations,” Durland v. United States, 161 U. S. 306, 313 (1896), and therefore a “scheme or artifice to defraud” Canada of taxes due on the smuggled goods.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [9132:9342] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693. |
| /us/544/0349-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 | Scheme or artifice to defraud | not Excluded from merits counts applied / dissent basis: law; opinion: Ginsburg, J., dissenting (joined by Breyer; Scalia and Souter in part); subject: opinion=Ginsburg, J., dissenting (joined by Breyer; Scalia and Souter in part) The dissent would hold a scheme whose only wrong is evasion of foreign customs and tax law outside 1343 (presumption against extraterritoriality, revenue rule, the specific antismuggling statute 18 U.S.C. 546, rule of lenity). The dissent is truncated by the 60000-char cap and was only skimmed. | concealment-as-misrepresentation/undeclared-goods-smuggled-past-customs | The presumption against extraterritoriality, which guides courts in the absence of congressional direction, provides ample cause to conclude that § 1343 does not extend to the instant scheme.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [51565:51756] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693. |
| /us/544/0349-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 | Transmission or causation by wire, radio, television | satisfied Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: conceded CAVEAT: uncontested point resting on one sentence; not a contested ruling on the wire element. Use of the wires (and its interstate character, New York to Maryland) was not disputed in this Court; only scheme and property were. The sentence is the premise of the Court's answer to the extraterritoriality objection, not a contested ruling on the wire element. | telephone-orders/interstate-calls-to-buy-goods-for-smuggling | According to the evidence presented at trial, the Pasquantinos, while in New York, ordered liquor over the telephone from discount package stores in Maryland.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [760:918] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.Unlike the treaties and the antismuggling statute, the wire fraud statute punishes fraudulent use of domestic wires, whether or not such conduct constitutes smuggling, occurs aboard a vessel, or evades foreign taxes.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [9617:9833] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693.Petitioners used U. S. interstate wires to execute a scheme to defraud a foreign sovereign of tax revenue.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0349-01; Unicode character offsets [29824:29930] (end exclusive); SHA-256 320769dc88fb8a8fa39aac524a6fd97eed9d98adf063295b8996aa906e8ac693. |