USA v. Benjamin Biancofiori, No. 21-3372 (7th Cir. 2024)
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In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 21-3372 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BENJAMIN BIANCOFIORI, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 16 CR 306-1 — Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge. ____________________ SUBMITTED FEBRUARY 26, 2024 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 28, 2024 ____________________ Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. A jury convicted Benjamin Bianco ori of sex tra cking by force, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1591, and he was sentenced to 360 months in prison plus supervised release for life. The evidence permitted the jury to nd that, between 2007 and 2016, Bianco ori compelled nine adult women to engage in prostitution, beating them if they tried to escape or failed to hand over their receipts. Details do 2 No. 21-3372 not matter for current purposes. We address in this opinion Bianco ori’s contention that §1591 covers only the sex traf cking of minors or is unconstitutional. We address his other appellate arguments in a non-precedential order released contemporaneously. Section 1591(a) reads: Sex tra cking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion (a) Whoever knowingly— (1) in or a ecting interstate or foreign commerce, or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person; or (2) bene ts, nancially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which has engaged in an act described in violation of paragraph (1), knowing, or, except where the act constituting the violation of paragraph (1) is advertising, in reckless disregard of the fact, that means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion described in subsection (e)(2), or any combination of such means will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b). The trailing paragraph makes tra cking of a minor an alternative to tra cking of “a person” by “force, threats of force, fraud, coercion … or any combination of such means”. Either tra cking through force or tra cking a minor su ces. And if there were doubt (which there is not), the caption—“traf cking of children or by force” (emphasis added)—shows that the language of the trailing paragraph is not some kind of garble. A statute’s caption cannot diminish the scope of the No. 21-3372 3 statute’s text, see Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 542 U.S. 241, 256 (2004), but it can show that the text means what it appears to say, as this caption does. The text and caption together are su ciently clear that it would be unwarranted to consider legislative history. Bianco ori insists that this straightforward reading of the statute produces absurd results by penalizing the sex tra cking of adults more harshly than the sex tra cking of minors. Under subsection (b)(2), to which subsection (a) refers, the minimum sentence for sex tra cking of a minor is 10 years’ imprisonment, while subsection (b)(1) provides for a 15-year minimum sentence when the defendant tra cs any person by force. We have two reactions. First, we do not see any incongruity in providing that using force increases the minimum sentence. Congress did not take leave of its senses in providing that tra cking an 18year-old girl by beatings and other physical terror is more serious than tra cking a 17-year-old girl without force. Second, Bianco ori supposes that judges should use their own ideas of what is absurd or strange to override an explicit statutory text. We held in Jaskolski v. Daniels, 427 F.3d 456, 461– 62 (7th Cir. 2005); United States v. Logan, 453 F.3d 804, 806 (7th Cir. 2006), a rmed, 552 U.S. 23 (2007); Spivey v. Vertrue, Inc., 528 F.3d 982, 984–85 (7th Cir. 2008); and Soppet v. Enhanced Recovery Co., 679 F.3d 637 (7th Cir. 2012), that only linguistic absurdity permits a corrective intervention; substantive matters are for the legislature whether or not a judge nds the choice hard to swallow. As we put it in Soppet, 679 F.3d at 642: “[A]djudication is not the continuation of legislation by other means.” 4 No. 21-3372 We could not nd any appellate decision holding that §1591(a) is limited to the sex tra cking of minors. Nor could we nd any precedential opinion holding the opposite, though United States v. Cook, 782 F.3d 983 (8th Cir. 2015), is close. But the argument has been made frequently in district courts, and at least one district judge bought it. United States v. Afyare, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86587 (M.D. Tenn. June 12, 2013), reversed, 632 Fed. App’x 272 (6th Cir. 2016). Although the Sixth Circuit did not issue a precedential decision—apparently believing the issue too clear for reasonable debate, see 632 Fed. App’x at 275–79—the fact that a patter of arguments similar to Bianco ori’s continues in the district courts implies the need to resolve the matter with precedential e ect. Bianco ori’s fallback is that §1591(a) is unconstitutionally vague. For the reasons we have given, however, the statute’s rule is well-de ned. Bianco ori’s argument relies on statements in the legislative history, not on the statutory language. Many a statement by many a legislator is vague, or does not match the enacted statute, but that does not render invalid an enacted text whose meaning is ascertainable. We do not perceive any other plausible constitutional argument against the statute’s application to Bianco ori. AFFIRMED
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