US v. Marcus Taylor, No. 19-7246 (4th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this Case
Defendant was a detective in Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force, a unit charged with investigating firearms-related crimes. After a trial where the government showed Defendant and some of his colleagues stole money, drugs, and other items on the job, a jury convicted him of Hobbs Act robbery and racketeering offenses. The district court sentenced Defendant to 18 years of imprisonment, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release. This appeal challenges the district court’s later-imposed restitution order. Defendant claimed the restitution order is unwarranted and unsupported. The people to whom the court ordered Defendant to make restitution both admitted to selling drugs, and one said at least some of the stolen cash came from illegal drug sales. Defendant argued these people were not “victims” under 18 U.S.C. Section 3663A(a)(2) because “[t]he proceeds of illegal activity are not the property of the person who obtained the funds through that activity” and the government failed to prove that either the cash or personal property was “untainted.”
The Fourth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that although one of the people to whom Defendant was ordered to make restitution admitted some of the stolen cash was drug proceeds, the same person insisted the rest was lawfully earned from his job as a painter. Defendant, in contrast, suggests all the stolen cash and property were drug proceeds. The restitution statutes supply no rules for how district courts are to resolve these sorts of questions. The court wrote that, in the end, “no amount of policy talk can overcome plain statutory text.”
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.