McNally v. United States
| McNally v. United States | |
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| Argued April 22, 1987 Decided June 24, 1987 |
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| Full case name | Charles J. McNally and James E. Gray v. United States of America |
| Citations | 483 U.S. 350 (more) |
| Prior history | 790 F.2d 1290 (6th Cir.), cert. granted, 479 U.S. 1005 (1986). |
| Holding | |
| The scope of the federal mail fraud statute is limited to the protection of money and property rights, and does not extend to the rights of the citizenry to good government. | |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | White, joined by Rehnquist, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Powell, Scalia |
| Dissent | Stevens, joined by O'Connor |
| Laws applied | |
| 18 U.S.C. § 1341 | |
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Superseded by
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| 18 U.S.C. § 1346 | |
McNally v. United States, 483 U.S. 350 (1987), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that the federal statute criminalizing mail fraud applied only to the schemes and artifices defrauding victims of money or property, as opposed to those defrauding citizens of their rights to good government. The case was superseded one year later when the United States Congress amended the law to specifically include honest services fraud in the mail and wire fraud statutes.
Julian Carroll became Governor of Kentucky in 1974; that same year, Howard P. Hunt became the chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party. Kentucky purchased workmen's compensation insurance from Wombwell Insurance Agency; Hunt conspired with Robert Tabeling, the vice president of the insurance agency, to award the state's insurance business to Wombwell in exchange for kickbacks being sent to other insurance agencies specified by Hunt. $200,000 in kickbacks made it to Seton Investments, Inc., which was nominally headed by Charles McNally but actually run by Hunt and Carroll's Secretary of Public Protection and Regulation, James E. Gray. McNally received $75,500 for acting as frontman for Seton, while Hunt and Gray used the rest of the money to purchase condominiums in Florida and an automobile, among others.
In 1983, Hunt, McNally, and Gray were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of mail fraud for defrauding the citizens of Kentucky of "their right to have the Commonwealth's business and its affairs conducted honestly, impartially, free from corruption, bias, dishonesty, deceit, official misconduct, and fraud," and of "money and other things of value," using the United States mail. Hunt pleaded guilty to mail and tax fraud, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. Six of the eight charges against the defendants were dismissed before the trial, but they were convicted by a jury on the remaining two counts of conspiracy and fraud.
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