284
Thomas, J., dissenting
by federal officials). By stretching the bounds of extortion to make it encompass bribery, the Court today blurs the traditional distinction between the crimes.4
4 The Court alleges a "complete absence of support" for the definition of common-law extortion set forth in this dissent, and cites five American cases that allegedly support its understanding of the crime. Ante, at 269- 271. The Court is mistaken on both counts: even a brief perusal of 19thand early 20th-century cases, as well as treatises and hornbooks, shows that my description of the crime is anything but novel, and the cases cited by the Court in no way support its argument.
The Court first cites two intermediate-court cases from Pennsylvania, Commonwealth v. Wilson, 30 Pa. Super. 26 (1906), and Commonwealth v. Brown, 23 Pa. Super. 470 (1903). Those opinions, both written by one Judge Rice, display an obvious misunderstanding of the meaning of "color of office." Citing the definition of that phrase set forth in the Cyclopedia of Law and Practice, see n. 1, supra, the Court confuses a false pretense of official authority to receive a payment with a false pretense of official authority to do an official act. See Wilson, supra, at 31 ("Bribery on the part of an officer and extortion are not identical, but they are very closely allied; and whilst the former does not necessarily involve a pretense of official authority to do the act for which the bribe is given, yet, if such pretense is used to induce its payment, we see no reason to doubt that the taking of it is common-law extortion as well as bribery") (emphasis added). But, as Hawkins, Blackstone, and all other expositors of black-letter law make clear, the crux of common-law extortion was the unlawful taking of money by color of office, not the unlawful taking of money to do an act by color of office.
In any event, the Pennsylvania court's unorthodox understanding of common-law extortion in no way supports the Court's definition of the crime, as the Pennsylvania court explicitly required a pretense of authority to induce the unlawful payment—precisely the requirement the Court today rejects. See also Commonwealth v. Francis, 201 Pa. Super. 313, 322-323, 191 A. 2d 884, 889 (1963) (citing Wilson and Brown for the proposition that "the extraction of money or other things of value under a threat of using the power of one's office may constitute extortion" and explaining that "[a]lthough we have recognized that the crimes of common law extortion and bribery may coincide at times, . . . it is generally held that they are mutually exclusive crimes") (emphasis added).
The third case cited by the Court, State v. Sweeney, 180 Minn. 450, 231 N. W. 225 (1930), does not involve extortion at all—it upheld a Minneapolis alderman's conviction for bribery. At trial on one charge of receiving a
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