Opinion ID: 537726
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Multiple Gambling Businesses

Text: 198 Defendants raise a similar objection to the court's failure to instruct the jurors, as requested, that they could choose to find only one overall gambling business in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1955, rather than the five separate gambling businesses that the indictment charged in five separate counts. Defendants argued below that the government was charging five separate businesses, rather than one, in order to increase its chances of obtaining guilty verdicts on at least two predicate acts, and thus of obtaining RICO convictions. The jury returned guilty verdicts with respect to four of these businesses: the Las Vegas nights; the Lowell barbooth games; the numbers business; and the North Margin Street poker games. Defendants now contend that the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury on defendants' one business only defense to these multiple charges. 199 The same legal standards govern our review of this contention as governed our analysis of defendants' proposed voice identification instruction. Applying these standards, there are two fatal flaws in defendants' argument. First, defendants failed to present sufficient evidentiary support to warrant instructing the jury on their one business only theory. As we stated previously, [a] judge is required to charge on a defense theory only if the evidence provides some foundation for it. United States v. Durrani, 835 F.2d 410, 419-20 (2d Cir.1987); see also Silvestri, 790 F.2d at 192. Defendants have failed to provide such a foundation. They have not pointed to any place in the record, and we have found none, where an evidentiary basis was laid to support the proposition that the gambling operations were so linked as to constitute only one business. At best, they can cite to one short sequence of questions on cross-examination of an FBI agent and one brief comment in the closing argument of defense counsel where reference was made to the one business only theory. These references, however, were no more than conclusory allegations and insinuations that the government was acting in bad faith and charging five gambling businesses solely to increase its chances of obtaining a guilty verdict on two predicate RICO acts. Defendants offered no evidentiary support for these allegations. This lack of support is in contrast with the government's evidence in favor of finding distinct businesses--the gambling activities were conducted over different time periods, held in different locations, and operated by different managers and personnel. There was little or no evidentiary grounds to warrant instructing the jury on the one business only theory. See Rodriguez, 858 F.2d at 815. 200 Furthermore, even assuming adequate foundation in the record, defendants have failed to show that the one business only defense played a sufficiently important role in the trial so that the failure to give the requested instruction  'seriously impaired the defendant's ability to effectively present a given defense.'  Gibson, 726 F.2d at 874 (quoting Grissom, 645 F.2d at 464). As we have noted, only passing reference was made to the issue at trial. 21 The paucity of such references undercuts any argument that the issue was of such importance that the failure specifically to instruct on it seriously impaired a given defense. And the references that were made indicated that the one business only theory was targeted at undermining any RICO verdict founded solely on gambling predicate acts. Yet, all of the defendants convicted under RICO were found guilty of at least one non-gambling predicate act. This further weakens any contention that the one business only theory could have played a crucial role in the defenses primarily raised and relied on by defendants. For all these reasons, we find no reversible error in the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on the one business only theory. 201