New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that bank robbers are subject to mandatory 10-year sentences if they force others to accompany them, even for very short distances.

The case concerned Larry Whitfield, a North Carolina man who in 2008 entered the home of 79-year-old Mary Parnell while fleeing the police after a botched bank robbery.

Mr. Whitfield forced Ms. Parnell, who was upset and crying, to move with him from her living room to another room about nine feet away. She suffered a fatal heart attack, and Mr. Whitfield was captured not long after.

The question in the case, Whitfield v. United States, No. 13-9026, was whether the short movement inside Ms. Parnell’s home was enough to subject Mr. Whitfield to prosecution under a 1934 federal law that calls for a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence when a criminal “forces any person to accompany him” during a bank robbery or while fleeing.

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said the word “accompany” must be given its ordinary meaning.

“It was, and still is,” he wrote, quoting old newspaper articles and other sources, “perfectly natural to speak of accompanying someone over a relatively short distance, for example: from one area within a bank ‘to the vault’; ‘to the altar’ at a wedding; ‘up the stairway’; or into, out of, or across a room.”

Justice Scalia added examples from English literature, quoting passages from Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.

Truly minor movements do not count, Justice Scalia wrote.

“It must constitute movement that would normally be described as from one place to another,” he said, “even if only from one spot within a room or outdoors to a different one.”

The 1934 law was enacted in reaction to a spate of bank robberies committed by John Dillinger and others. That history, Mr. Whitfield argued, should inform the court’s understanding of the scope of the law.

Justice Scalia rejected that argument.

“The Congress that wrote this provision may well have had most prominently in mind John Dillinger’s driving off with hostages,” Justice Scalia wrote, “but it enacted a provision which goes well beyond that.”

“It does not seem to us that the danger of a forced accompaniment varies with the distance traversed,” he said. “Consider, for example, a hostage-taker’s movement of one of his victims a short distance to a window, where she would be exposed to police fire; or his use of the victim as a human shield as he approaches the door.”