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The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the defense on Monday in a case involving a Mexican national who was convicted of money laundering after authorities discovered $81,000 hidden in his car in 2004.
The Case
Humberto Cuellar was heading for the Mexican border when he was stopped by police. The money was found in a secret compartment under the floorboard, and he was charged with money laundering. Cuellar was sentenced to 6 ½ years.
In a 9-0 vote, the Supreme Court overturned Cuellar’s conviction and ruled that the sheer act of hiding money is not enough to prove money laundering.
“We agree with [Cuellar] that merely hiding funds during transportation is not sufficient to violate the [money laundering] statute, even if substantial efforts have been expended to conceal the money,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Law
In 1986, Congress enacted a law that made it a crime to transport cash into or out of the U.S. for unlawful purposes, including the purpose of concealing its source.
The government’s war on drugs was a driving force behind the law, enabling prosecutors to more easily secure convictions in cases where defendants could not explain large amounts of cash in their possession.
The Defense
Defense attorneys argued that the law was being used to broadly and sometimes used to force defendants into pleading guilty to crimes like drug dealing.
According to attorney Jeffrey Green, it’s not unheard of for people who carry significant amounts of case to want to hide it for security reasons. This fact alone, he said, should not be sufficient to prove money laundering.
“The decisions today significantly raise the bar for prosecutors to prove money laundering charges,” Green said.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
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