Supreme Court of the United States
Samuel Ocasio, Petitioner v. United States.
May 2, 2016136 S. Ct. 1423
Summary
The Supreme Court affirmed Ocasio’s Hobbs Act conspiracy conviction, holding that a conspiracy to commit extortion does not require the conspirators to agree to obtain property from someone outside the conspiracy. The Court rejected the argument that shop owners could not be co‑conspirators because they were the source of the property, and noted that the decision does not overturn Evans’s definition of extortion. Justice THOMAS dissented, and Justice BREYER concurred in the judgment while questioning Evans.