Carter v. United States, 530 U.S. 255, 32 (2000)

Page:   Index   Previous  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  Next

286

CARTER v. UNITED STATES

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

Id., at 327. We further stated that the "heart of the [entering] crime is the intent to steal," and that "[t]his mental element merges into the completed crime if the robbery is consummated." Id., at 328. Prince thus conveys the Court's comprehension that an intent to steal is central not only to the entry and larceny crimes, but to robbery as well.

United States v. Wells, 519 U. S. 482 (1997), relied on by the Court, ante, at 265, is not in point. In that case, we held that the offense of making a false statement to a federally insured bank, 18 U. S. C. § 1014, did not include a requirement of materiality. We reached that holding only after concluding that the defendants in that case had not "come close to showing that at common law the term 'false statement' acquired any implication of materiality that came with it into § 1014." 519 U. S., at 491. Indeed, the defendants made "no claims about the settled meaning of 'false statement' at common law." Ibid. Moreover, we held that "Congress did not codify the crime of perjury or comparable common-law crimes in § 1014; . . . it simply consolidated 13 statutory provisions relating to financial institutions" to create a single regulatory offense. Ibid. Three of those 13 provisions, we observed, had contained express materiality requirements and lost them in the course of consolidation. Id., at 492-493. From this fact, we inferred that "Congress deliberately dropped the term 'materiality' without intending materiality to be an element of § 1014." Id., at 493. Here, by contrast, it is clear that Congress' aim was to codify the common-law offenses of bank robbery and bank larceny; that intent to steal was an element of common-law robbery brought into § 2113(a) via the word "feloniously"; and that Congress' deletion of that word was not intended to have any substantive effect, much less to dispense with the requirement of intent to steal.

Having accepted the Government's argument concerning intent to steal, the Court goes on to agree with the Government that robbery, unlike larceny, does not require that

Page:   Index   Previous  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007