United States v. Patty McClain Joseph M. Rodriguez, Ada Eveleigh Simpson, William Clark Simpson and Mike Bradshaw

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

Museum directors, art dealers, and innumerable private collectors throughout this country must have been in a state of shock when they read the news — if they did — of the convictions of the five defendants in this case. 1 The defendants were indicted under the National Stolen Property Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2314, 2315, and were convicted of conspiring to transport and receiving through interstate commerce certain pre-Columbian artifacts (terra cotta figures and pottery, beads, and a few stucco pieces) knowing these artifacts to have been stolen. These articles had not been…