Shaw v. United States | |
---|---|
Argued October 4, 2016 Decided December 12, 2016 | |
Full case name | Lawrence Eugene Shaw, Petitioner v. United States |
Docket no. | 15–5991 |
Citations | 580
U.S. ___ (
more) 137 S. Ct. 462; 196
L. Ed. 2d 372 |
Opinion announcement | Opinion announcement |
Case history | |
Prior | United States v. Shaw, 781 F.3d 1130 ( 9th Cir. 2015) |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinion | |
Majority | Breyer, joined by unanimous |
Laws applied | |
18 U.S.C. § 1344 |
Shaw v. United States, 580 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that clarified the application of the federal bank fraud statute to cases where a defendant intends to only defraud a customer of the bank, rather than the bank itself. [1]
Lawrence Shaw received the information from a bank account at Bank of America that belonged to a customer, Stanley Hsu. Shaw used that information to take money from Hsu but did not directly steal from the bank. Shaw was convicted under a federal statute criminalizing fraud against banks and appealed, arguing his target was its customer.
In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the Court held that a scheme to defraud customers also deprives the bank of money in which the bank held a "property right", and criminal defendants may therefore be convicted under the federal statute for schemes to defraud bank customers. [2] However, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to determine whether the trial court administered an erroneous jury instruction. [3]