In United States v. Grimon, No. 17-15011 (May 13,
2019) (Hull, Marcus, Grant), the Court affirmed the defendant's identity-theft
convictions.
On appeal, the defendant argued that the factual proffer
supporting her guilty plea was insufficient to establish that unauthorized
access devices affected interstate commerce, and therefore the district court
lacked subject matter jurisdiction. The
Court rejected that argument on the ground that the interstate-commerce element
was not jurisdictional. It explained that
the interstate-commerce element went to whether Congress had the power to
regulate the conduct, not to whether the district court had subject matter
jurisdiction over the case. As a result,
even if an indictment or factual proffer fails to sufficiently allege facts
affecting interstate commerce, that would not deprive the court of subject
matter jurisdiction over the offense; it would go only to the sufficiency of
the evidence. All that's required for
subject matter jurisdiction is an indictment charging a violation of a valid
federal law. The Court rejected the
defendant's reliance on Iguaran, a title 46 case, on the ground that the
statute there required the district court to make a preliminary determination
of subject matter jurisdiction.
