![]() The first references to "blackmail" date from the sixteenth century, when Scotland made it a crime to obtain property by certain written threats of physical harm to person or property (1567 Scot. Blackmail and extortion by a private person Thus the same envelope filled with cash can be both a payment extorted under a threat of unfairly negative treatment and a bribe obtained under a promise of unfairly positive treatment. If he pays, he gets more than fair treatment (bribery). If the bidder does not pay, he gets less than fair treatment (coercive extortion). Usually, the official makes the bidder aware that he will not get the contract unless he pays off the official, and if the bidder pays, he will definitely get the contract. In most payoff situations, however, we will not clearly know who actually deserved to get a public contract. In many jurisdictions the contractor would not have done anything illegal since he was forced to buy back only what he deserved in the first place, but in others he would be guilty of bribery. The official would receive the payoff under a threat to give the contractor worse than fair treatment. Thus, coercive extortion has at least three baselines (fair treatment, expected treatment, and the status quo).įor example, it is extortion if a public official threatens to deny a public contract to a bidding contractor who clearly deserves to receive it unless the bidder pays off the official. The payee is guilty of extortion the payer is the victim of extortion. Nonetheless, a solid majority of cases (especially cases before 1850 and cases after 1970) hold that bribery and extortion overlap -sometimes even affirming bribery and extortion convictions for the same transaction.Ĭoercive extortion by a public official is the seeking or receiving of a corrupt benefit paid under an implicit or explicit threat to give the payer worse than fair treatment or to make the payer worse off than he is now or worse than he expects to be. Some American courts attempted to separate bribery and extortion, occasionally even claiming that the two crimes were mutually exclusive (Symposium, pp. Then, as now, extortion has usually embraced takings by various methods: coercion, false pretenses, or bribery. One sees much the same kind of public corruption case in the late 1200s as in modern cases. According to William Hawkins, extortion at common law was "the taking of money by any officer, by colour of his office, either where none at all is due, or not so much is due, or where it is not yet due" (vol. 26 (repealed), which prohibited extortion by a sheriff or other royal official. In England, among the earliest extant statutes setting out the crime of extortion was the First Statute of Westminster (1275), 3 Edw. Extortion by a public officialĮxtortion is an older term than blackmail. Of a corrupt payment by a public official (or a pretended public official) because of his office or his ability to influence official action. Historically, extortion under color of office is the seeking or receipt The distinction traditionally drawn between robbery by intimidation and some forms of extortion is that a person commits robbery when he threatens to do immediate bodily harm, whereas he commits extortion when he plans to do bodily harm in the future. Statutes usually set out the kinds of threats that make up coercive extortion -for example, the threat to commit a crime, injure person or property, or expose a crime or contemptible information. Extortion offenses include not only threats obtaining property, but also those compelling any action against one's will (also called criminal coercion). Extortion by threats or fear (coercive extortion) can refer to any illegal use of a threat or fear to obtain property or advantages from another, short of violence, which would constitute robbery. Few "blackmail" statutes remain on the books, with most statutes prohibiting such behavior as extortion, theft, or criminal coercion.Įxtortion is of two types: (1) extortion by threats or fear and (2) extortion under color of office. Blackmail generally refers to hush money, and extortion refers to certain forms of public official misconduct and to those making threats of physical harm to person or property. The terms blackmail and extortion are often used interchangeably yet in ordinary speech, they connote somewhat different behavior. Extortion refers to obtaining property or compelling action by the use of threats or by the misuse of public office. ![]()
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