By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//January 13, 2015//
U.S. Supreme Court
Criminal
Bank robbery – Sufficiency of the evidence
A bank robber “forces [a] person to accompany him,” for purposes of §2113(e), when he forces that person to go somewhere with him, even if the movement occurs entirely within a single building or over a short distance.
At the time the forced-accompaniment provision was enacted, just as today, to “accompany” someone meant to “go with” him. The word does not, as Whitfield contends, connote movement over a substantial distance. Accompaniment requires movement that would normally be described as from one place to another. Here, Whitfield forced Parnell to accompany him for at least several feet, from one room to another, and that surely sufficed. The severity of the penalties for a forced-accompaniment conviction—a mandatory minimum of 10 years, and a maximum of life imprisonment—does not militate against this interpretation, for the danger of a forced accompaniment does not vary depending on the distance traversed. This reading also does not make any other part of §2113’s graduated penalty scheme superfluous.
548 Fed. Appx. 70, affirmed.
13-9026 Whitfield v. U.S.
SCALIA, J.