Date: 06-28-2024

Case Style:

James E. Snyver v. United States of America

Case Number: 23-108

Judge: Kavanaugh

Court: United States Supreme Court

Plaintiff's Attorney: United States Attorney's Office in Chicago (Cook County)

Defendant's Attorney:

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Description:

Indianapolis, Indiana criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with bribery.

Federal and state law distinguish between two kinds of payments to
public officials—bribes and gratuities. Bribes are typically payments
made or agreed to before an official act in order to influence the public
official with respect to that future official act. Gratuities are typically
payments made to a public official after an official act as a reward or
token of appreciation. While American law generally treats bribes as
inherently corrupt and unlawful, the law’s treatment of gratuities is
more nuanced. Some gratuities might be innocuous, and others may
raise ethical and appearance concerns. Federal, state, and local
governments have drawn different lines on which gratuities and gifts
are acceptable and which are not.

For example, Congress has established comprehensive prohibitions
on both bribes and gratuities to federal officials. If a federal official
accepts a bribe for an official act, federal bribery law provides for a 15-
year maximum prison sentence. See 18 U. S. C. §201(b). By contrast,
if a federal official accepts a prohibited gratuity, federal gratuities law
sets a 2-year maximum prison sentence. See §201(c).

In 1984, Congress passed and President Reagan signed a law now
codified at 18 U. S. C. §666 that, as relevant here, extended the
gratuities prohibition in §201(c) to most state and local officials.
Congress reversed course after two years and amended §666 to avoid
the law’s “possible application to acceptable commercial and business
practices.” H. R. Rep. No. 99–797, p. 30 (1986). As amended, the text
of §666 now closely resembles the bribery provision for federal officials,
§201(b), and makes it a crime for most state and local officials to
“corruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to accept “anything of value”
“intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with” any official
business or transaction worth $5,000 or more. §§666(a)(1)(B), (b)

That crime carries a 10-year maximum prison sentence. §666(a).
This case involves James Snyder, who is the former mayor of
Portage, Indiana. In 2013, while Snyder was mayor, Portage awarded
two contracts to a local truck company, Great Lakes Peterbilt, and
ultimately purchased five trash trucks from the company for about
$1.1 million. In 2014, Peterbilt cut a $13,000 check to Snyder. The
FBI and federal prosecutors suspected that the payment was a
gratuity for the City’s trash truck contracts. But Snyder said that the
payment was for his consulting services as a contractor for Peterbilt.
A federal jury ultimately convicted Snyder of accepting an illegal
gratuity in violation of §666(a)(1)(B). The District Court sentenced
Snyder to 1 year and 9 months in prison. On appeal, Snyder argued
that §666 criminalizes only bribes, not gratuities. The Seventh Circuit
affirmed Snyder’s conviction.

Outcome: Section 666 proscribes bribes to state and local officials but does
not make it a crime for those officials to accept gratuities for their past
acts. Pp. 7–16.
(a) Six reasons, taken together, lead the Court to conclude that §666
is a bribery statute and not a gratuities statute—text, statutory
history, statutory structure, statutory punishments, federalism, and
fair notice. Pp. 7–14.
(1) The statutory text strongly suggests that §666—like §201(b)—
is a bribery statute, not a gratuities statute. The dividing line between
§201(b)’s bribery provision and §201(c)’s gratuities provision is that
bribery requires an official to have a corrupt state of mind and to
accept (or agree to accept) a payment intending to be influenced in an
official act. Section 666 shares the defining characteristics of §201(b)’s
bribery provision. By contrast, §666 bears little resemblance to
§201(c), which contains no express mens rea requirement. Pp. 7–8.
(2) The statutory history reinforces that result. When enacted,
§666 borrowed language from §201(c), the gratuities statute for federal
officials. Two years later, Congress amended §666 to model it instead
on §201(b), the bribery statute. It would be strange to interpret §666,
as the Government suggests, to mean the same thing now that it did
before the amendment. Pp. 8–9.
(3) Statutory structure reinforces that §666 is a bribery statute,
not a two-for-one bribery-and-gratuities statute as the Government
posits. The Government identifies no other provision in the U. S. Code
that prohibits bribes and gratuities in the same provision. And §201
does not do so. That is because bribery and gratuities are “two
separate crimes” with “two different sets of elements.” United States
v. Sun-Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U. S. 398, 404. P. 9.
(4) For federal officials, Congress has separated bribery and
gratuities into two distinct provisions of §201 for good reason: The
crimes receive different punishments that “reflect their relative
seriousness.” Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at 405. For example, accepting
a bribe as a federal official is punishable by up to 15 years in prison,
while accepting an illegal gratuity as a federal official is punishable by
up to only 2 years. If the Government were correct that §666 also
covered gratuities, Congress would have inexplicably authorized
punishing gratuities to state and local officials five times more severely
than gratuities to federal officials—10 years for state and local officials
compared to 2 years for federal officials. The Government cannot
explain why Congress would have created such substantial sentencing
disparities. Pp. 9–10.
(5) Interpreting §666 as a gratuities statute would significantly
infringe on bedrock federalism principles. Generally, States have the
“prerogative to regulate the permissible scope of interactions between
state officials and their constituents.” McDonnell v. United States, 579
U. S. 550, 576. The differing approaches by the state and local
governments reflect policy judgments about when gifts expressing
appreciation to public officials for their past acts cross the line from
the innocuous to the problematic. Those carefully calibrated policy
decisions would be gutted if the Court were to accept the Government’s
interpretation of §666. Reading §666 to create a federal prohibition on
gratuities would suddenly subject 19 million state and local officials to
a new and different regulatory regime for gratuities. The Court should
hesitate before concluding that Congress prohibited gratuities that
state and local governments have allowed. After all, Congress does not
lightly override state and local governments on such core matters of
state and local governance. Pp. 10–11.
(6) The Government’s interpretation of the statute would create
traps for unwary state and local officials. Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at
411. The Government says that the statute would not cover
“innocuous” or “obviously benign” gratuities, but the Government does
not identify any remotely clear lines separating such a gratuity from a
criminal gratuity. The Government simply opines that state and local
officials may not accept wrongful gratuities. The Government’s so-
called guidance would leave state and local officials entirely at sea to
guess about what gifts they are allowed to accept under federal law,
with the threat of up to 10 years in federal prison if they happen to
guess wrong. That is not how federal criminal law works. And the
Court has rejected the view that it should construe a criminal statute
on the assumption that the Government will use it responsibly. See
McDonnell, 579 U. S., at 576. Pp. 11–14.
(b) Faced with the phalanx of difficulties with its interpretation of
§666, the Government’s argument boils down to one main point—that
§666 uses the term “rewarded” as well as “influenced.” The Government says that Congress would not have added the term
“rewarded” to “influenced” in §666 if the statute were meant to cover
only bribes and not also gratuities. That argument is misconceived.
Contrary to the premise of the Government’s argument, bribery
statutes sometimes use the term “reward.” See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §600;
33 U. S. C. §447. Moreover, without the term “rewarded” in §666, an
official might try to defend against a bribery charge by saying that the
payment was received only after the official act and therefore could not
have “influenced” the act. By including the term “rewarded,” Congress
made clear that the timing of the agreement is the key, not the timing
of payment. Although a gratuity or reward offered and accepted by a
state or local official after the official act may be unethical or illegal
under other federal, state, or local laws, the gratuity does not violate
§666. Pp. 14–16.
71 F. 4th 555, reversed and remanded.

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