Nature of the Case
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Facts
D was a successful art dealer in New York City. In 1991, D met Jonathan Tokeley Parry (Parry), a British national. Parry showed D a photograph of an ancient sculpture of the head of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and told D that he had obtained the sculpture in Egypt earlier that year from a man who represented himself to be a building contractor. Parry had used an Egyptian middle-man named Ali Farag (Farag) to facilitate the deal. Parry had smuggled the sculpture out of Egypt by coating it with plastic so that it would look like a cheap souvenir, then removed the plastic coating once the sculpture was in England. D offered Parry a substantial fee to serve as the agent for sale of the Amenhotep sculpture, which Parry accepted. Parry and D set out to create a false provenance for the sculpture so that they could sell it. They decided that they would claim that the sculpture had been brought out of Egypt in the 1920s by a relative of Parry and kept in an English private collection since that time. They invented 'Thomas Alcock Collection,' and represented to potential buyers that the sculpture came from this collection. Parry prepared fake labels, designed to look as though they had been printed in the 1920s, and affixed the labels to the sculpture. Parry also restored the sculpture using a method popular in the 1920s. Eventually, Parry sold the sculpture to D for $800,000, and Schultz sold it to a private collector in 1992 for $1.2 million. In June 1995, Symes, who then owned the Amenhotep sculpture, asked D to provide him with more details about the sculpture's origin, because he had learned that the Egyptian government was pursuing the sculpture. D and Parry made a number of attempts to deal in antiquities, many of which were thwarted by the items being fakes. D was eventually indicted for conspiring to receive stolen antiquities through interstate and foreign commerce, in violation of the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA), 18 U.S.C. § 2315. D moved to dismiss the indictment, contending that the Egyptian antiquities he allegedly conspired to receive were not owned by anyone, and therefore could not be stolen. The prosecution asserted that the antiquities were owned by the Egyptian government pursuant to a patrimony law known as 'Law 117' which declared all antiquities found in Egypt after 1983 to be the property of the Egyptian government. D argued that the Egyptian government's form of ownership should not be recognized by the United States under Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983 (CPIA), 19 U.S.C. §§ 2601-13. The district court denied the motion to dismiss in a written memorandum and order. The jury found D guilty on the sole count of the indictment. D appealed. On appeal, the Court received three amicus curiae briefs. The National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental & Primitive Art, Inc.; International Association of Professional Numismatists; The Art Dealers Association of America; The Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association; The Professional Numismatists Guild; and The American Society of Appraisers filed a brief in support of D. An ad hoc group called Citizens for a Balanced Policy with Regard to the Importation of Cultural Property, made up of politicians, academics, and art collectors, also filed a brief in support of D. These briefs argue primarily that allowing D's conviction to stand would threaten the ability of legitimate American collectors and sellers of antiquities to do business. The Archaeological Institute of America; The American Anthropological Association; The Society for American Archaeology; The Society for Historical Archaeology; and the United States Committee for the International Council on Monuments and Sites filed a brief in support of the United States. This brief argues primarily that sustaining D's conviction and applying the NSPA to cases such as this one will help to protect archaeological and cultural sites around the world.
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