Criminal Law: February 2008 Archives
Even this Supreme Court occasionally finds itself to the left of the Bush Administration. The Court on Monday heard argument on what exactly should be the limit of the Money Laundering Control Act, which has been aggressively invoked in recent years by the Justice Department. In fact, in the last two years, more than 2000 defendants have been charged under the Act, but such charges often stemmed from the mere concealment of money not trying to make it clean.
Officers had stopped Humberto Cuellar in
A Bush Administration lawyer tried to answer tough questioning on why the mere concealment of cash in a car headed for
When the Justice Department attorney responded by arguing that putting money in a suitcase in a car’s trunk might be evidence of a “design to conceal,” Chief Justice Roberts said: “When I use a suitcase, I’m using it to carry my clothes, not to conceal them.”
This is the second money laundering case the Court has heard this term. Four months ago, the Justices considered the government's use of the money laundering law in a gambling case. In that case, a defendant convicted of running an illegal lottery operation was sentenced to five years in prison for gambling and 17 1/2 years for money laundering. Prosecutors had argued that the act of compensating employees and paying off the winning bettors constituted money laundering. “Come on," Scalia told a Justice Department lawyer. "Nobody runs a gambling operation without paying off the winners. It's not going to last very long. To make the paying off of the winners a separate crime from running the gambling operation seems to me quite extraordinary." Indeed.
Alan Milstein
Inevitable. Senator Arlen Specter's office confirms that the Senator is seeking a "sit-down" with Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the National Football League to discuss what has now been dubbed "spygate", specifically, the New England Patriots purported "spying" on opposing teams to gain a strategic advantage in games and the NFL's response and conduct in the wake of that purported activity, including alleged destruction of data.
The Senator is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the same Committee that investigates criminal conduct at the highest levels of government, including Watergate and Iran-Contra; conduct where the face of the nation was on trial. Now, the Committee is looking into the propriety of a football team and it's governing body. Don't misconstrue, there is a history of private litigants challenges to the conduct of the NFL in the civil controversy arena, but the Senate Judiciary Committee, perhaps the most prestigious sophisticated Congressional Committee in the United States government? Maybe the attention drawn to Senator Mitchell's investigation of Major League Baseball has something to do with it? To date, the New England Patriots have not commented on the media reports and no one within the organization has confirmed the number of videographers or rather, whether there was more than one "shooter".
John M. Hanamirian
