United States v. Letter from Alexander Hamilton to the Marquis De Lafayette Dated July 21, 1780

• Decision Date: 06 October 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-2061,20-2061
• Citation: 15 F.4th 515
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. LETTER FROM ALEXANDER HAMILTON TO the MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE DATED JULY 21, 1780, Defendant in Rem, Aldrich L. Boss, as personal representative for the estate of Stewart R. Crane, Claimant, Appellant, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Acting by and through The Massachusetts Archives, Claimant, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

15 F.4th 515

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, Appellee,

v. LETTER FROM ALEXANDER HAMILTON TO the MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE DATED JULY 21, 1780, Defendant in Rem,Aldrich L. Boss, as personal representative for the estate of Stewart R. Crane, Claimant, Appellant,Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Acting by and through The Massachusetts Archives, Claimant, Appellee.

No. 20-2061

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

October 6, 2021

Ernest Edward Badway, with whom Fox Rothschild LLP was on brief, for appellant.

Carol E. Head, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Nathaniel R. Mendell, Acting United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee United States.

Adam J. Hornstine, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Maura Healey, Attorney General of Massachusetts, was on brief, for appellee Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Before Howard, Chief Judge, Selya and Lynch, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Alexander Hamilton was a principal author of the Federalist Papers and our nation's first Secretary of the Treasury. Few people played more significant roles in the founding of the republic. When he wrote a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette on July 21, 1780 (the Letter), warning of imminent danger to French troops in Rhode Island, Hamilton scarcely could have imagined that it would some day become the focal point of a civil forfeiture action. But truth often outpaces imaginings, and — after the Letter was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from a fine antiques auctions house in Virginia — the United States (the government) filed just such a forfeiture action the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The district court, tasked with resolving competing claims advanced by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (the Commonwealth) and Aldrich L. Boss in his capacity as personal representative for the estate of Stewart R. Crane (the Estate), awarded the Letter to the Commonwealth. The Estate appeals. Concluding, as we do, that the Estate's reach exceeds its grasp, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

This civil forfeiture action begins — and ends — with the provenance of the property that lies at its center. That provenance is (unless otherwise indicated) uncontroverted.

Upon learning that British troops stationed in New York were "making an embarkation with which they menace the French fleet and army" stationed in Rhode Island, Hamilton wrote the Letter to relay that information to Lafayette. When Lafayette received the Letter, he met with Massachusetts General William Heath, who forwarded the Letter, accompanied by a letter of his own summarizing Lafayette's intelligence, to the President of the Massachusetts Council (the Commonwealth's executive body during the Revolutionary War period). The Council received these missives on July 26, 1780, and, as a result, authorized sending Massachusetts troops to Rhode Island to bolster the embattled French forces.

The Letter, along with the Council's other records of the period, were transferred in due course to the Commonwealth and eventually entered the custody of the Massachusetts Archives (the Archives). An internal table of contents and name index for Volume 202 of the Archives collection identified the Letter and General Heath's cover letter as part of the collection when the index was compiled in the mid-nineteenth century. Some thirty years later (in the 1880s), the Archives again identified the Letter in an index of Volume 202. And in the 1920s, the Archives selected Volume 202 for reproduction using the then-novel technology known as photostatic copying. A photostat of the Letter was made and bound in a separate booklet along with other documents from Volume 202.

At some point thereafter, the Letter left the Archives. The date of the Letter's departure is shrouded in mystery. It is evident, however, that by the time a compilation of Hamilton's papers was being prepared in the 1950s, the Letter had disappeared. Only the photostat could be found in the Archives. See The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, Volume II: 1779-1781 362-63 (Harold C. Syrett ed., 1961).

How the Letter vanished from the Archives collection is hotly disputed. Although we do not resolve that contretemps, we recount the parties' conflicting positions.

The government and the Commonwealth assert that the Letter was purloined by Harold E. Perry, a kleptomaniacal cataloguer who worked for the Archives from 1938 to 1945 or 1946. Perry had extensive access to original papers and, during his tenure, absconded with numerous historical documents. He sold some to disreputable dealers and hoarded others in his Cambridge residence. By the time the compilation of Hamilton's papers was published in 1961, the Archives had declared that the Letter was "missing." See id. The Estate conjures up an alternate reality. It suggests that the Letter was "permissively alienated from the Archives" by "negligence" or because the Archives no longer wanted to go through the trouble of maintaining the original document.

Whatever its itinerary, the Letter eventually came into the possession of Stewart R. Crane.¹ Stewart Crane inherited the Letter from his grandfather, R.E. Crane. In November of 2018, Stewart Crane included the Letter in a consignment to the Potomack Company (Potomack), a Virginia auctioneer, for sale at auction. Potomack discovered that the Letter was listed as "missing" from the Archives, contacted the Archives, and learned that the Archives deemed the Letter stolen. Potomack notified the FBI, which seized the Letter pursuant to a judicial warrant on December 19, 2018.

Roughly five months later, the government filed a verified complaint for forfeiture in rem against the Letter, alleging that the Letter was subject to forfeiture under 18 U.S.C. § 981(a)(1)(C) as property traceable to a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2314 and/or 18 U.S.C. § 2315 (statutes that criminalize, respectively, interstate transport of and trade in stolen goods valued over $5,000). See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956(c)(7)(A), 1961(1). The complaint also alleged that "only the Commonwealth can lawfully own original documents from its collection dated before 1870, including ... the [Letter]" because Massachusetts law "prohibits the lawful removal or alienation of such documents from the Commonwealth's custody." As required by Rule G(4)(a) and (b) of the Supplemental Rules of Admiralty or Maritime Claims and Asset Forfeiture Actions, notice was given to all known potential claimants and posted on a government website.

The government gave due notice of the institution of the forfeiture proceedings. Only the Commonwealth and the Estate filed claims to the Letter.² The government moved to strike the Estate's claim under Supplemental Rule G(8)(c)(i)(B), asserting that the Estate lacked standing to intervene as a claimant because the Letter is "a Massachusetts public record that only the Commonwealth can own" and because "one cannot maintain good title to stolen property against its true owner." The Estate counter-attacked, moving to dismiss the government's complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

All parties consented to proceed before a magistrate judge, see 28 U.S.C. § 636(c) ; Fed. R. Civ. P. 73(a), who consolidated the pending motions for hearing. After receiving the parties' briefs and hearing arguments, the district court, in a thoughtful rescript, granted the government's motion to strike the Estate's claim. See United States v. Letter from Alexander Hamilton to the Marquis de Lafayette Dated July 21, 1780, 498 F. Supp. 3d 158, 175 (D. Mass. 2020). The court concluded (as relevant here) that the Letter was a public record, which could be owned only by the Commonwealth, thus precluding any ownership interest by the Estate. See id. at 165-71. The court then denied as moot the Estate's motion to dismiss. See id. at 175. And having concluded that the Commonwealth is the only entity that can own the Letter, the court awarded it to the Commonwealth. This timely appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

With eyes on the prize, the Estate assails the judgment below on multiple fronts. First, the Estate argues that the Letter is not a public record that only the Commonwealth may own. Second, the Estate argues that even if the Letter is a public record, the Letter could have been — and was — lawfully alienated by the Commonwealth. Third, the Estate argues that because its predecessor in interest purchased the Letter for value and without knowledge of its possible theft, it is an "innocent owner" within the purview of 18 U.S.C. § 983(d) and is thus entitled, at a minimum, to cash compensation. Finally, the Estate argues that the Commonwealth's competing claim (and, by implication, the forfeiture complaint itself) is barred by the doctrine of laches. It is against the backdrop of this asseverational array that we turn to the task at hand.

In a civil forfeiture proceeding, we review a district court's legal conclusions (including legal conclusions on questions of standing) de novo and factual findings for clear error. See United States v. Carpenter, 941 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2019) ; United States v. U.S. Currency, $81,000.00, 189 F.3d 28, 33 (1st Cir. 1999). Where, as here, an interpretation of state law forms part of the district court's reasoning, we review that interpretation de novo. See Gargano v. Liberty Int'l Underwriters, Inc., 572 F.3d 45, 49 (1st Cir. 2009). We are not wed to the district court's reasoning but, rather, may affirm its final judgment on any rationale made manifest by the record. See Román-Cancel v. United States, 613 F.3d 37, 41 (1st Cir. 2010).

A. Standing.

Standing is a threshold question in civil forfeiture cases. See United States v. One-Sixth Share of James J. Bulger in All Present & Future Proceeds of Mass Millions Lottery Ticket No. M246233, 326 F.3d 36, 40 (1st Cir. 2003). Parties seeking to press claims of entitlement in such proceedings must demonstrate independent standing....