Joseph Carey plead guilty to conducting an illegal gambling business in 2003. As a convicted felon he is ineligible to possess a gun. In Heller the Supreme Court specifically excluded convicted felon from those who could possess weapons.

Carey now wants to have a gun. Therefore he moved in the United States District Court to expunge his record. The motion was denied, without a hearing, on the basis that the court did not have jurisdiction.

Carey appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Sixth Circuit held that “[a]n order on a motion to expunge a conviction is within the equitable jurisdiction” of the District Court. Therefore the proper action for the Sixth Circuit to take is to return the case to the District Court for it to consider whether or not, using its equitable jurisdiction it should grant the motion to expunge. But instead the Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court decision saying that the District Court properly used its discretion in denying Carey a hearing and in denying his motion. The problem is that the District Court never used its discretion in denying the motion since it wrongly decided that it did not have jurisdiction.

Aiding and abetting requires (1) an act contributing to the commission of the crime; and (2) the intent to aid in the commission of the crime. In United States v. Bronzino the Sixth Circuit, yesterday, found Vincenzo Bronzino guilty of aiding and abetting money laundering.

Bronzino paid an illegal betting debt to Peter Messina using 15,000 dollars worth of legally obtained betting chips. Messina was reluctant to take the chips. He was afraid that if he tried to cash them in he would have to give his name. Bronzino told him not to worry. That as long as he cashed less than 10,000 dollars of chips in at a time he would be okay. The law requires that anyone involved in a cash transaction of over ten thousand dollars provide their name and identity as well as the source of the money.

However the offense of structuring a money laundering transaction is accomplished by manipulating an event by using multiple transactions to avoid the ten thousand dollar limit. Bronzino did not deny that Messina committed money laundering when he used multiple transactions to convert the fifteen thousand dollars of gambling chips into cash. But he argued that by encouraging Messina to use multiple transactions he was not aiding and abetting the crime.

The Sixth Circuit found that Bronzino committed an act contributing to the commission of the crime with the intent to aid in the commission of the crime. Specifically he contributed to money laundering by “teaching” Messina how to perform multiple transactions in an attempt to avoid detection. As such he was a catalyst without which the crime would not have occurred.

Second, as to Bronzino’s intent, Bronzino argued that he did not have the intent to violate the money laundering laws. He merely wanted to encourage Messina to take the chips in payment of the debt. To be guilty of money laundering one must have the specific intent to violate the same law as the individual committing the offense. The Court found that while they had different motivations they had the same intent. Both wanted “to make the illegal venture succeed.” They both “shared the common purpose of consummating the transaction without triggering the federal reporting requirement,” The Sixth Circuit finding both an act and the intent upheld the conviction.