Extortioner

“ We had a long account to settle with our extortioner.
“Hope you find yourself at home—take a sociable glass, that’s a good fellow—glad to see you amongst us,” sung out as many voices as biscuit after biscuit was sent at the purser’s head, while Westbrook mixing a stiff tumbler of salt and water proffered it to our victim to drink.
“Spu—spu—gentlemen, spu, I promise you—the utmost penalty of—of the regulations—you shall be mast-headed—disrated—you shall, so help me God.”
“A penalty! a penalty! the worthy man is profane: how shall we punish such immorality?” ”

“ To hold that a company foreman vested with sufficient power substantially to affect his subordinates' contracts of employment is within the Act's proscription is not to hold that the Act applies to every extortioner, blackmailer, or other person who extracts money from one who has previously received it for labor on a federally financed project. ”

“ That evening I drew up with great care a policy of insurance against the loss occasioned by having to employ counsel if arrested for crime. On its back was indorsed the following insidious philosophy:
"Innocent men, as well as guilty, are frequently arrested for violating the law. This costs money. Lawyers are notorious extortioners. For ten dollars a year we guarantee to defend you for nothing if charged with crime. Twenty-five dollars insures entire family. We make no distinction between ex-convicts and others.
"ABRAHAM GOTTLIEB,
"Of Counsel." ”

“ They are described as extortioners who sought by every device to filch the money of suitors to the last farthing, and when any fraud was too glaring for their own performance they had subordinate officials ever ready to play into their hands, rendering their occupation more base than that of a pimp with his bawds. ”

“ At any rate, the betrayers of virtue, the seducers of ignorant, innocent girls, the rich tyrants and extortioners, those who oppress and rob the poor, and lots of people who do abominable things, and all sinners, for every one is a traitor to goodness, should never take up even the smallest pebble to hurl at the badgered and bewildered Judas. ”

“ The Supreme Court seems to lose sight of the fact that the crime of extortion in this State is not confined to persons in office, and exercising official influence.
“8. A threat to do a lawful act, if made for the purpose of putting a person in fear, and thereby securing money or property which the person was not in law entitled to have and receive, renders such person guilty of extortion, under the weight of decision and the better doctrine; and taking the case in that view, the indictment is amply sufficient, and should have been upheld by the court. ”

“ EXTORTION (ML. extortio, Lat. extorsio, from extorquere, to extort, from ex, out + torquere, to twist) , in its widest sense, any form of taking or obtaining anything from another by means of illegal compulsion or oppressive exaction. As a technical term of the common law it has been judicially defined as the “crime committed by an officer of the law, who under color of his office unlawfully and corruptly takes any money or thing of value that is not due to him, or more than is due, or before it is due.” ”

“ And as to the conduct of the officers of the revenue, the provision in favor of trial by jury in criminal cases, will afford the security aimed at. Wilful abuses of a public authority, to the oppression of the subject, and every species of official extortion, are offenses against the government, for which the persons who commit them may be indicted and punished according to the circumstances of the case. ”

“ The term 'extortion' means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right. "Sec. 2. Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce, or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion, shall be guilty of a felony. "Sec. 3. Whoever conspires with another or with others, or acts in concert with another or with others to do anything in violation of section 2 shall be guilty of a felony. ”

“ That some of the substantive sections may be repetitive as being variants in phrasing of the same delict, or that petitioner could not be cumulatively punished for both an attempt to extort and a completed act of extortion, has no relevance to the legal consequences of two incontestably distinctive offenses, conspiracy and the completed crime that is its object. ”

“ The indorsement on the margin of the indictment constitutes no part of the indictment, and does not add to or weaken the legal force of its averments. We must look to the indictment itself, and, if it properly charges an offense under the laws of the United States, that is sufficient to sustain it, although the representative of the United States may have supposed that the offense charged was covered by a different statute.
That the first count of each indictment makes a case of extortion under color of office, within the meaning of section 5481, is too clear to admit of dispute. ”

“ William Rader of Calvary Presbyterian church, in a sermon preached on the evening of the Sunday after the decision was made public, January 12, 1908, “extortion is not a crime, when bribery is not even a wrong, when a confessed felon can learn that he is really righteous, and that his trial, confession and conviction have all been nothing but a mistake—a slight mistake—I repeat that however correct this may be legally and ethically, it has the effect of making us stand amazed at the rapid revolutions of the legal wheels. ”

“ Others, such as Pennsylvania, retain the common-law definition of extortion but prohibit conduct for which appellees were charged under other statutes. [5] At least one State does not denominate any specific act as extortion but prohibits appellees' type of activities under the general heading of offenses directed against property. ”

“ And be it further enacted, That, if any officer of the United States shall be guilty of extortion, under, or by colour of his office, every person so offending shall, on conviction thereof, be punished by fine, not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment, not exceeding one year, according to the aggravation of the offence. ”

“ A crime necessarily so secret as this form of extortion cannot be expected to leave traces behind it, except in those cases in which it proved a failure, but sufficient instances of the latter are on record to show that the tribunals were surrounded by men who made a trade of their influence, real or presumed, with the judges. When these were incorruptible the business was suppressed with more or less success, but when they were acquisitive, they had ample field for unhallowed gain, to be wrung without stint or check from the subject populations both by bribery and extortion. ”

“ Unlike the victim of an ordinary theft, he generally knows who has taken the property from him and he consents to the taking though under duress; and unlike most victims of embezzlement, he is able to report the taking to law enforcement officers during the taxable year and his failure to do so might be considered a kind of continuing consent to the extortionist's dominion over the property. The longer he acquiesces the less likely it becomes that the extortion victim ever will demand restitution ”

“ All indictments also come before them in which a deposit has to be made by the prosecutor, namely, indictments for concealment of foreign origin, for corrupt evasion of foreign origin (when a man escapes the disqualification by bribery) , for blackmailing accusations, bribery, false entry of another as a state debtor, false testimony to the service of a summons, conspiracy to enter a man as a state debtor, corrupt removal from the list of debtors, and adultery. They also bring up the examinations of all magistrates, and the rejections by the demes and the condemnations by the Council. ”

“ Although the victim of either embezzlement or extortion ordinarily has a legal right to restitution, the extortion victim, like a blackmail victim, can in a sense be charged with complicity in bringing about the taxable event in that he knowingly surrendered the funds to the extortionist, sometimes in payment of an actual obligation. ”

“ If by a force put upon the mind, or in other words, by the application of coercive motives, it must be by producing the apprehension of some evil: which evil, if the act is an offence, must be some evil to which on the occasion in question the one person has no right to expose the other. This is one case in which, if the offence be accompanied with the intention of detaining the thing for ever, whether it be or be not accompanied with the intention of not being amenable to law, it seems to agree with the idea of what is commonly meant by extortion. ”

“ Breaking into a house and opening boxes and drawers are circumstances of aggravation; but any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man's own testimony, or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his goods, is within the condemnation of that judgment. ”

“ I understand the matter thus, O judges:—when any man is accused of extortion, if there be a contest between any parties as to who may best be entrusted with the prosecution, these two points ought to be regarded most especially; first, whom they, to whom the injury is said to have been done, wish most to be their counsel; and secondly, whom he, who is accused of having done those injuries, would least wish to be so. ”

“ Whoever extorts bribes from another person shall be given a heavier punishment.
Article 387 Where a State organ, State-owned company, enterprise, institution or people's organization extorts from another person or illegally accepts another person's money or property in return for securing benefits for the person, if the circumstances are serious, it shall be fined, and the persons who are directly in charge and the other persons who are directly responsible for the offence shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years or criminal detention. ”

“ If you do not pay, it is his misfortune. It was all a business affair, and by no possible construction can be twisted into a crime. Nor does it matter how the partnership was formed, so that it existed. It is no crime to lie in regard to an opinion. You have violated no law,—you have simply taken advantage of its weak places to your own gain and to the hurt of certain stupid fools. The Attorney General will never permit an extradition in this case while the world stands. Go home, man, and sleep,—you are as safe from the law as though you were in the grave. ”

“ Subsequent payment of the duties, therefore, is no defence to an information for a forfeiture founded upon antecedent wrongful acts, as the effect of such wrongful acts, where the forfeiture is made absolute by statute, is to divest the owner of all property in the goods seized and to vest the title to the same in the United States, in case a prosecution ensues, and a decree of condemnation follows, as the decree of condemnation when entered by a court of competent jurisdiction relates back to the date of the wrongful acts as alleged and proved at the trial or in the hearing of the cause. ”

“ A person who, by extortion, causes another to surrender his property or obtains pecuniary advantage from the latter, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than ten years or by a fine not exceeding twenty million won. ”

“ Capulet Attic, who had, however, acted in all respects very properly for the plaintiff, in so trying to run away with their senses. The plaintiff seemed to be entitled, almost on the admission of the company, to fair and reasonable compensation; but that was all. The presumed wealth of a great corporation like the —— Railway Company was not a fact that should lay them open to extortion, and he would tell the jury that excessive damages might bear the complexion of meditated or of unconscious injustice. ”

“ The defendants not only omitted this plain, imperative duty, but detained the plaintiff in prison, not with a view to punish him for the offence of which they suspected him to be guilty, but to coerce from him payment of money alleged to be due by him and others to a substitute broker. Where is the law or reason for allowing one, who by force holds another in confinement in order to extort the payment of money, to show in extenuation of his conduct that the man had been guilty of some offence against the law? ”

“ I tell you that the combined influence of all these people will make it next to impossible to secure convictions, and will make it very dangerous for all of us. It will not do to lessen the weight of my testimony any by having me plead guilty in that extortion case. Besides that, the Court would not allow me bail after I had pleaded guilty, and the Supreme Court may knock out the elisor, and then I would be absolutely in the hands of the other people, and they would surely kill me. ”

“ All the other objections are appropriate to a demurrer or a motion to quash or in arrest of judgment. They are attacks upon the indictment as a criminal pleading, the right to make which counsel expressly renounce. If well founded, they show that the indictment is bad. But the Constitution does not require, as an indispensable prerequisite to interstate extradition, that there should be a good indictment, or even an indictment of any kind. It requires nothing more than a charge of crime. ”

“ Finally, where the United States Code explicitly criminalizes conduct such as that alleged in the present case, it calls the crime bribery, not extortion-and like all bribery laws I am aware of (but unlike § 1951 and all other extortion laws I am aware of) it punishes not only the person receiving the payment but the person making it. ”

“ These prosecutions for forfeitures of large and valuable portions of property, under the revenue laws, are highly penal in their consequences; and the Government and its officers are always parties, and deeply concerned in the conviction and forfeiture. And if, by act of Congress or by judicial decisions, the prosecution can be turned over to the admiralty side of the District Court, as being neither a criminal prosecution nor a suit at common law, the trial of the cause is then transferred from a jury of the country to the breast of a single judge. ”