But today's opinion involves a defendant convicted for extortion, and Judge Harutunian (sitting from San Diego) writes something that suggests -- quite accurately, I think -- that the line between "extortion" and simple "robbery" is often an incredibly narrow one.
Take, as here, a guy who walks up to someone and says (in sum or substance) "Give me $100 or I'll beat you." Sounds like a fairly typical robbery, eh? But it can also sound like a classic attempt at extortion -- in particular, a demand for payment of "protection" money.
So which is it? Or is it both? Regardless, what's the legal distinction?
Here, it seems like it's extortion -- which is what the defendant is in fact convicted of -- if only because the defendant did the same thing to the victim repeatedly and on a schedule (i.e., here, on the first of every month). That seems clearly a protection racket and, hence, extortion.
But imagine it was only the first time he did it. And, perhaps, that it was simply a one-time thing: pay me $100 now or I'll hurt you. Robbery? Extortion? Totally hard to tell.
I'm not certain at all that I can come up with an actual "rule" to distinguish the two crimes, honestly. I have a keen sense that I know extortion (as opposed to robbery) when I see it, at least in its most classic manifestations. But were prosecutors to charge someone with extortion in the classic robbery setting -- e.g., the prototypical "mugging" scenario -- I'm not sure I could come up with good arguments for why one crime is the one and the other crime is the other.
There's got to be a difference, that I know: we don't (and can't) have entirely duplicative crimes. But what the difference actually is here honestly escapes me.
Perhaps smarter others can figure it out. But as for me, I remain befuddled.
