Carter, Floyd J. v. U.S. (06/12/2000)
Carter, Floyd J. v. U.S. (06/12/2000)
By: Esther Campi, Medill News Service
Questions presented
Is federal bank larceny, 18 U.S.C. Section 2113(b), under which the defendant must have ""intent to steal or purloin,"" a lesser included offense of federal bank robbery, 18 U.S.C. Section 2113(a), which requires the resort to ""force and violence, or...intimidation"" in the presence of another person, as a matter of law?
Brief
""We rob banks"" was the classic line from the 1967 movie Bonnie & Clyde. For Floyd J. Carter and the authorities who prosecuted him, that description is what all the legal ruckus is about.
On Sept. 9, 1997, Carter, unarmed, entered the Collective Federal Savings Bank in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, wearing a ski mask. He vaulted over the customer service counter with a single leap to a spot where three tellers were standing. As one teller ran away, Carter emptied her money drawer into a brown paper bag. Then he emptied the drawer beside it.
After collecting almost $16,000, Carter repeated his vaulting performance back over the counter, warned that no one should follow him and ran to a getaway car driven by his accomplice, Terry Stillwell.
Later the same day, the police caught Carter. Carter waived his Miranda rights and confessed to an FBI agent that he and Stillwell had driven to Hamilton Township to steal money from the bank.
After admitting the basic facts of the case, Carter pleaded not guilty to bank robbery.
On Jan. 20, 1998, the trial judge who was handling the case ruled in a pretrial motion that it would be improper to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of bank larceny at Carter's hearing. A jury found Carter guilty of bank robbery on Jan. 23, 1998, and Carter was sentenced to 215 months in prison.
At that time, Carter was also sentenced to 24 months each for three counts of bank larceny in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for conduct Carter says was similar to that for which he was convicted of bank robbery in New Jersey. Carter had pleaded guilty on the Pennsylvania indictment, and the case had been transferred to New Jersey to be consolidated for sentencing purposes.
Carter appealed the bank robbery conviction. But in a unanimous June 16, 1999 opinion, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.
Carter argued that a jury should have had the option of choosing between robbery and the lesser-included offense of larceny. The distinction is crucial because robbery carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Larceny carries a 10-year maximum.
Carter said robbery is a crime of violence and does not necessarily include the intent to steal. Larceny, on the other hand, contains different penalties depending on the dollar amount intended to be taken, which shifts the focus to the intent to steal.
Carter said the 3rd Circuit panel relied on an overly strict, text-based analysis of the law and ignored history. The word ""felonious"" was included in robbery statues, he said, until Congress embarked on a campaign in 1948 to clean up a complicated federal code by removing the words ""felony"" and ""misdemeanor"" from the books. In the process, lawmakers mistakenly removed the word ""felonious"" in the robbery statues, textually wiping out the key word that clearly deals with intent.
In seeking review by the U.S. Supreme Court, Don McCauley, Carter's counsel, said, ""'Felonious' means something different from 'felony.'"" The first means someone meant to steal, while the latter distinguishes between misdemeanors and higher offenses, he said. McCauley said since ""the Bible Days,"" courts have understood robbery to include an intent to steal.
The technical question before the Supreme Court is whether larceny is merely one element in the broader crime of robbery - known as a ""lesser-included offense"" - or whether the two crimes are so different that a jury must either convict or acquit a defendant charged with robbery without considering larceny.
On Dec. 13, 1999 the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case.
On June 12, 2000, an ideologically-divided Court affirmed, holding 5-4 against Carter.
Because the federal larceny law contains several elements that are not part of the robbery law, larceny is not a ""lesser included offense,"" wrote Justice Clarence Thomas for the majority. Joining Justice Thomas were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
In her dissent, that was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized the majority for its ""woodenly literal"" interpretation of the law.