Mark Johnson v. United States

The federal mail and wire fraud statutes prohibit “obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent, pretenses, representations, or promises.” 18 U.S.C. §§1341, 1343. This Court has repeatedly held that terms in federal criminal statutes, particularly fraud statutes, must be interpreted in accordance with their common-law meanings. See, e.g., Universal Health Servs., Inc. v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1989, 1999 (2016); Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358, 404-05 (2010); Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 21-23 (1999). Under the common law, an oral promise is unenforceable if arms-length counterparties exclude it from a written contract containing an integration clause. Yet the Second Circuit affirmed Petitioner’s criminal conviction for the purported breach of such an oral promise, on the theory that he deprived the “victim” of its “right to control” its assets, because the purported breach “affected the very nature of the bargain.” The court held that “even if the parties’ contract was never breached,” a person can be imprisoned for wire fraud because an unenforceable oral promise excluded from a written contract can nevertheless be deemed a “central part of the bargain.” The question presented is: Can an oral promise excluded from a fullyintegrated written contract, which is unenforceable under the common law, be a “false or fraudulent…promise[]” under federal criminal statutes on the theory that it furthered a scheme to obtain the “victim’s” intangible “right to control” its assets?