Prosecuting Dogfighting: The Case for the Expansion of the Federal RICO Statute

Dogfighting “constitutes a half-billion dollar industry,” an industry which requires the cooperation and coordination of several individuals including kennels, fight promoters, dog “sponsors,” and, of course, spectators. As such, dogfighting can, and should, be classified as a form of organized crime. The federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which was included in the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, would seem to be the perfect vehicle for prosecuting dogfighting defendants. However, dogfighting is not listed as any one of the one hundred predicate offenses specifically listed within the statute and required to establish a “pattern of racketeering” in order to bring this crime under the purview of the RICO statute. The federal RICO statute is not the only vehicle by which dogfighting might be successfully deterred and curtailed on a large scale, although it does appear to be particularly well-suited to this crime, considering dogfighting’s often interstate nature. All fifty states now have statutes criminalizing dogfighting as a felony and some states have even codified their own state RICO statutes in the fight against this blood sport. Additionally, the federal Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act provides for felony penalties for the import or export in interstate commerce of “any dog or other animal for participation in an animal fighting venture.” Unfortunately, the options for dogfighting prosecution listed above leave something to be desired. There are several issues regarding the difficulties of prosecuting this crime — the long-term investigations that are required to bust the largest and most insidious dogfighting rings, the resources required to conduct these investigations (which most states do not have), the living evidence of the crime, and the extreme level of secrecy within which these fights are conducted, which makes it difficult for undercover investigators to gain access. Recently, a very high-stakes Alabama dogfighting organizer was sentenced to eight years in prison, but it took a four-year long investigation, after which 451 dogs were ultimately seized, at least seventy-three of which had to be euthanized. This Paper focuses on other less traditional options within the law that might be employed in order to enable more efficient prosecution of dogfighting. Specifically, this Paper makes the argument for expansion of the federal RICO statute to include dogfighting as one of the predicate offenses, regardless of the differences in states’ laws minimum sentencing requirements for dogfighting. Section I discusses the history of dogfighting and its evolution into what it has become today. Section II examines modern dogfighting and its different iterations. Section III discusses the ancillary crimes that notoriously accompany dogfighting and the deleterious effects this sport has on communities and juveniles in particular. Section IV explores current federal and state laws that criminalize dogfighting and their effectiveness, and Section V addresses the potential application and expansion of the federal RICO statute to facilitate the prosecution of dogfighting and all the crimes that accompany it. Finally, this paper concludes by suggesting that the federal RICO statute be amended to include dogfighting explicitly as a predicate offense, and absent that, encouraging states to consider expanding or enacting their own RICO statutes to prosecute, or at least deter, this inhumane blood sport.