Bicycle shop owner Lawrence DiCristina, prosecuted for running an illegal poker game, has petitioned the US Supreme Court to rule on the case.
Mr DiCristina was charged with running two table No Limit Hold’em game where he charged 5% of each pot and in return “provided card dealers, food, and drinks.” The games were held regularly at his bicycle shop in New York.
Initially Federal Judge Jack Weinstein ruled that the game of poker is “predominated by skill” and dismissed the indictment. However, this decision was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where it was ruled that the “game of skill” argument was immaterial to the case.
The petition asks the court to rule on two more fundamental points of law—the Supreme Court will only decide to hear the case if an important issue is at stake.
The first point concerns the appellate court ruling that state laws predominated. The appeal argues that ruling that “state law alone defines the offense,” is incorrect and contradicts “the ‘uniform federal definition’ doctrine,” In other words, the court wrongly ruled that state law applied, when in fact federal law should have been used.
Secondly, the appeal argues about the appellate court’s interpretation of the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA) clause that says that gambling “includes but is not limited to pool-selling, bookmaking, maintaining slot machines, roulette wheels or dice tables, and conducting lotteries, policy, bolita or numbers games, or selling chances therein, makes it a federal felony to host poker games.”
The essential question that the Supreme Court is asked to rule on is “how to interpret ‘including but not limited to’ clauses.”
The appeal suggests that Congressional debate on the act concentrated on its main purpose—to counteract the involvement of organized crime in gambling. It suggests that the inclusion of obscure games such as “bolita” reflects this interest, and that had Congress wanted poker to be included in the list it would have done so.
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This is an abridged version of an article previously published on pokerfuse PRO.
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