The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unanimously against a man convicted of armed robbery who had argued that the district court could not seize his assets because the court missed a filing deadline.
In 2014, then-32-year-old Louis McIntosh from the Bronx borough of New York City was sentenced to 60 years in prison after being convicted of nine counts, among them conspiracy to commit armed robberies from 2009 to 2012.
According to the Supreme Court’s opinion, Mr. McIntosh purchased a BMW “just five days after one of his robberies.”
“After the jury convicted McIntosh, the District Court imposed a forfeiture of $75,000 and the BMW at the sentencing hearing,” the court stated. “Although the District Court also ordered the Government to submit an order for forfeiture for the court’s signature within a week from the hearing, the Government failed to do so.”
Mr. McIntosh filed a complaint alleging that failing to submit an order for forfeiture “meant that the District Court could not proceed with the forfeiture at all.”
“The District Court overruled McIntosh’s objections, finding that the Rule is a time-related directive, and that the failure to enter a preliminary order of forfeiture before sentencing did not prevent the court from ordering forfeiture before sentencing because the missed deadline did not prejudice McIntosh,” the court stated.
The Supreme Court held that the district court’s failure to submit an order for forfeiture “does not bar a judge from ordering forfeiture at sentencing subject to harmless-error principles on appellate review,” and that the District Court “retained its power to order forfeiture against McIntosh.”
Criminal Spree
According to local report from The Journal News, Mr. McIntosh and his co-conspirators stole from marijuana dealers in Yonkers and gamblers and waitresses at a men’s club in Poughkeepsie.He also stole $70,000 from wholesale ice cream business owner Robert Rizzatti after restraining and torturing him in his Long Island home.
“In one such robbery, McIntosh and two others held a man at gunpoint, bound and gagged him in his basement, and then took $70,000 in cash from the man’s house,” the court wrote of the incident. “Five days later, McIntosh bought a BMW for approximately $10,000 with cash and money orders and listed his mother as the buyer.”
Mr. Rizzatti later reported suffering pain from having a stun gun used on his genitals, a statement which Mr. McIntosh’s attorneys refuted in court, The Journal News reported.
Framing Mr. McIntosh as a Victim
Attorneys also framed Mr. McIntosh as a victim of a troubled childhood, whose father was shot and killed when he was six months old and who was bullied.According to The Journal News, his attorneys argued that Mr. McIntosh’s work history of being a tow truck driver and club bouncer doesn’t fit the prosecution’s portrayal of him as a head of a criminal enterprise.
In June 2011, Mr. McIntosh, as well as five others, were indicted on multiple counts of the Hobbs Act, a law that criminalizes extortion, armed robberies, and racketeering that impacts interstate and foreign commerce.
In total, he was convicted of 11 robbery and firearms charges after a nine-day trial, the Department of Justice reported in 2013.
Former Manhattan U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, said the verdict marked the end of Mr. McIntosh’s “lengthy and violent crime spree of armed robberies, shootings, pistol-whippings and stun gun abuses in Westchester County and elsewhere.”
“The close cooperation between federal and local law enforcement, as happened here, is one of our best weapons against crime,” Mr. Bharara said.
