United States v. Varbaro

597 F. Supp. 1173
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedNovember 13, 1984
Docket84 Cr. 656-CSH
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 597 F. Supp. 1173 (United States v. Varbaro) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Varbaro, 597 F. Supp. 1173 (S.D.N.Y. 1984).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

HAIGHT, District Judge:

In a two-count indictment filed September 7, 1984, defendant, a Westchester County electrical contractor, is charged with bribery of a Staten Island municipal electrical inspector. The indictment charges violations of the Interstate Travel in Aid of Racketeering statute (“the Travel Act”), 18 U.S.C. § 1952, which makes it a crime to use “any facility in interstate ... commerce ... to promote ... any unlawful activity,” and the Mail Fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1341. Defendant moves to dismiss the indictment as a whole and the two counts individually and for an order directing the filing of a bill of particulars and the taking of a pretrial deposition of a key witness.

I.

The ground for dismissal of Count One, charged under the Travel Act, is simply stated: defendant contends that any mailings made in connection with his alleged *1175 activities moved within New York State only and that a Travel Act violation cannot be premised upon intrastate mailings. 1 Although the indictment does not specify the origin and destination of the predicate mailings, the Government does not contest that it bases its prosecution only upon intrastate mailings. Instead it argues that the Travel Act applies to any use of the mails. No appellate case is cited on this point of statutory construction. 2

The language of the Travel Act, the requisite starting point for the interpretation of its provisions, arguably supports either position. The Act subjects to criminal penalty anyone who “travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility in interstate or foreign commerce, including the mail, with intent to ... (3) ... promote, manage, establish, [or] carry on ... any unlawful activity.” 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a). Section 1952(b) enumerates the specific crimes which constitute, “unlawful activity” for the purposes of § 1952(a). These include bribery.

Defendant notes that the statute requires use of a facility in interstate commerce rather than a facility of interstate commerce. In the realm of securities regulation this difference in prepositions has been used to distinguish between statutes requiring actual interstate activity (“in”) and mere intrastate use of an instrumentality of commerce which otherwise runs interstate (“of”). See Spilker v. Shayne Laboratories, Inc., 520 F.2d 523, 525 (9th Cir.1975), and cases cited therein. This distinction was relied on by Judge Metzner in holding that when a Travel Act prosecution is based on use of the telephone wires, actual interstate calls must be shown to satisfy the “in” interstate commerce requirement. United States v. De Sapio, 299 F.Supp. 436, 448-449 (S.D.N.Y.1969), aff'd., 435 F.2d 272 (2d Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 999, 91 S.Ct. 2170, 29 L.Ed.2d 166 (1971). The Government answers that too much should not be made of the “in-of” distinction, for Congress itself was not particularly careful in its use of this language. The specific example cited is the House Report on the Travel Act, which states that the Act is intended “to prohibit ... the use of the facilities of interstate ... commerce, including the mail, in aid of racketeering enterprises.” (emphasis added). H.R.Rep. No. 966, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., reprinted in, 1961 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 2664, 2664-65. The force of this argument is undercut somewhat by the fact that the drafters of the House Report may not have had the same motive for painstaking scrutiny of their language as do legislators. Their writing is, after all, exegesis rather than text. Nevertheless, the point is well-taken; this discrepancy cautions against excessive reliance on a single preposition.

The Government also raises an affirmative argument in defense of its position. It argues that the language of § 1952 differentiates use of the mail from use of other facilities by referring to the mail separately: “... uses any facility in interstate ... commerce, including the mail____” 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a). It is argued that

by singling out the mail from other facilities in the Act’s language, Congress plainly intended to make clear that it considered the mails , to be a “facility in interstate ... commerce” by its very nature; thus the phrase, “including the mails [sic],” as used in the statute, is intended to be descriptive of a “facility in interstate ... commerce,” whether or not *1176 the mails are used in an interstate fashion in that particular case---- Indeed, had Congress intended the construction now urged by Varbaro ... it could easily have used the phrase, “any facility, including the mails, in interstate ... commerce” to make clear that it deemed interstate mailing necessary.

Government’s Memorandum of Law in Opposition at 6-7.

The argument has some merit. The grammatical implication of placing “including the mail” after “commerce” rather than “facility” is to make it appear that the mail is intended to be taken as not merely a facility but a facility in interstate commerce. In opposition, defendants cite of § 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1938, 15 U.S.C. § 77q(a). Section 17(a) forbids securities fraud by way of “any means or instruments or transportation or communication in interstate commerce or by the use of the mails." (emphasis added). The argument is that this statute demonstrates that when Congress intends to hinge liability on any use of the mails it does so by separating entirely the reference to the mails from the reference to a “facility in interstate commerce.” 3 Defendant argues, of course, that the absence of such a separate reference to any use of the mails in § 1952(a) indicates that Congress intended the reference to “mail” to be governed by “facility in interstate ... commerce” and thus to require an interstate mailing.

The statutory language appears to wrestle itself to a draw. Both parties’ arguments are, in isolation, persuasive. Added together, they indicate that drawing any firm conclusion solely from the statutory language is unwise. The references are simply too ambiguous to give a conclusive answer on this relatively subtle point.

It is a familiar principle of statutory construction that when the language of the statute is ambiguous, courts must turn to the legislative history, construing the statute in light of the purposes it was designed to serve. Kokoszka v. Belford,

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
597 F. Supp. 1173, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-varbaro-nysd-1984.