Judges clash over venue for money laundering

Ronald Myers argued that he couldn’t be tried in the W.D. Mich. for money laundering because, although he stole motor homes in the W.D. Mich., he sold (and received laundered proceeds for) them solely in other districts.

In US v. Myers, issued yesterday, Judges Rogers and Merritt affirmed his convictions, over Judge Kethledge’s dissent.

The money-laundering statute allows prosecution in “any district where a prosecution for the underlying specific unlawful activity could be brought, if the defendant participated in the transfer of the proceeds of the specified unlawful activity from that district to the district where the financial or monetary transactions in conducted.” 18 U.S.C.§ 1956(i)(1)(B). 

As the majority saw it, the statute provided venue in W.D. Mich. because Myers’s motor-home thefts occurred there. Further, the majority decided that the statute doesn’t violate constitutional limits on venue because those limits “permit prosecution in a district where the crime was committed in part.” Although Myers's money-laundering “was completed elsewhere,” the majority reasoned, “it was begun and therefore committed in part in the Western District of Michigan.”

Judge Kethledge disagreed on the constitutional point. He explained that, in interpreting constitutional venue, the Supreme Court has looked “to the place of the ‘conduct elements’ rather than to the place of any ‘circumstance element[s]’ of the offense.” And, he argued, the only “conduct element” to a money-laundering offense is the financial transaction itself. Because the financial transactions at issue took place outside the W.D. Mich., Judge Kethledge would have reversed Myers’s money-laundering convictions.

In his conclusion, Judge Kethledge warned that "the Constitution requires us to determine venue crime-by-crime, rather than in gross." Which raises the question: What other statutes could be subject to venue challenge?