Opinion ID: 393273
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the multiple conspiracy doctrine and rico

Text: 24
25 Enterprise Conspiracy Count 26 It is now well settled that a material variance between the indictment and the government's evidence is created by the government's proof of multiple conspiracies under an indictment alleging a single conspiracy. 5 This multiple conspiracy doctrine is commonly illustrated by the Supreme Court's decision in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). The indictment in Kotteakos alleged a single conspiracy to obtain government loans by making fraudulent representations, but the government's proof at trial, by its own admission, demonstrated eight separate conspiracies. The common element in these conspiracies consisted solely of one man who had directed each group; aside from this single defendant, there was no connection among the various agreements. Despite their similar objectives and despite their common leadership, none of the Kotteakos conspiracies aided or benefited from the others, and no member of the various conspiracies (other than the leader) was aware of the others. As the Court aptly described these multiple conspiracies, the pattern established by the government consisted of separate spokes meeting in a common center but without the rim of the wheel to enclose the spokes. 328 U.S. at 755, 66 S.Ct. at 1243. Absent some connection (the rim) among the various conspirators (the spokes), the government's proof established multiple conspiracies. The Court held that such proof created a material variance with an indictment charging a single conspiracy and, as such, was reversible error unless the defendants' substantial rights had not been affected. 328 U.S. at 755-56, 66 S.Ct. at 1243-44. See, e. g., United States v. Elliott, 571 F.2d 880, 900 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 953, 99 S.Ct. 349, 58 L.Ed.2d 344 (1978); United States v. Baldarrama, 566 F.2d 560, 565-66 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 906, 98 S.Ct. 3094, 57 L.Ed.2d 1136 (1978); United States v. Cruz, 478 F.2d 408, 413-14 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 910, 94 S.Ct. 259, 38 L.Ed.2d 148 (1973). 6 27 In this case the government has by its own admission, as in Kotteakos, introduced no evidence of a single conspiracy but has instead rested its case on two distinct multiple conspiracies. The government did not attempt at trial to prove an agreement among all three defendants, but instead sought to establish separate conspiracies comprised of (1) Walker and Sutherland, and (2) Maynard and Sutherland. Like the multiple conspiracies in Kotteakos, these agreements share a common conspirator and similar objectives, but are otherwise unrelated. The government does not suggest that either bribery scheme was dependent on or benefited from the other, and does not dispute the defendants' contentions that neither Walker nor Maynard knew or should have known of the other. If there is not some interaction between those conspirators who form the spokes of the wheel as to at least one common illegal object, the 'wheel' is incomplete, and two conspiracies rather than one are charged. United States v. Levine, 546 F.2d 658, 663 (5th Cir. 1977). 28 Of course, the government need not always demonstrate an actual agreement among the various conspirators, or even actual knowledge of each other, in order to establish a single conspiracy. In Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U.S. 539, 68 S.Ct. 248, 92 L.Ed. 154 (1947), the Supreme Court recognized that in some cases the interdependent nature of the criminal enterprise is such that each conspirator had to have realized that it extended beyond his individual role. This form of conspiracy is often described as a chain rather than a wheel. Since the success of the criminal scheme depends on the success of each link in the chain, (a)n individual associating himself with a 'chain' conspiracy knows that it has a 'scope' and that for its success it requires an organization wider than may be disclosed by his personal participation. United States v. Elliott, supra, at 901, quoting United States v. Agueci, 310 F.2d 817, 827 (2d Cir. 1962), cert. denied, 372 U.S. 959, 83 S.Ct. 1013, 10 L.Ed.2d 11 (1963). The government does not contend that the case at bar is a chain conspiracy, and the evidence does not suggest one. Indeed, a chain conspiracy would be difficult to imagine on the facts of this case: while two people may in fact conspire together to bribe a single judge, there is no reason why one who has individually so acted must necessarily have assumed that others have also bribed the same judge. 29 The government does not defend its joint trial in this case on the basis of traditional conspiracy law, i. e., by arguing either that the evidence connected the spokes of a wheel conspiracy by common knowledge or agreement, or that the evidence demonstrates a chain conspiracy. Instead, the government argues that despite the apparent relevance to this case of the traditional multiple conspiracy doctrine, the defendants were properly tried together for a single enterprise conspiracy under RICO. The government contends, in brief, that a single conspiracy to violate a substantive RICO provision may be comprised of a pattern of agreements that absent RICO would constitute multiple conspiracies. The government contends that this is so even where, as here, there is no agreement of any kind between the members of the two separate conspiracies. According to the government, these otherwise multiple conspiracies are tied together by the RICO enterprise: so long as the object of each conspiracy is participation in the same enterprise in violation of RICO, it matters not that the different conspiracies are otherwise unrelated. Thus, the government argues that it need not demonstrate any connection between Walker and Maynard because the two conspiracies at issue each involved the same RICO enterprise the Municipal Court of the City of El Paso. 30 For this proposition the government relies on United States v. Elliott, 571 F.2d 880 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 953, 99 S.Ct. 349, 58 L.Ed.2d 344 (1978). We held in Elliott that a group of defendants who could not have been tried for a single conspiracy to violate any particular predicate crime could nevertheless be tried for a single conspiracy to violate RICO. Elliott involved six defendants who had committed a variety of unrelated offenses with no common purpose or agreement as to any of the various crimes. We explained: 31 Applying pre-RICO concepts to the facts of this case, we doubt that a single conspiracy could be demonstrated. Foster had no contact with Delph and Taylor during the life of the alleged conspiracy. Delph and Taylor, so far as the evidence revealed, had no contact with Recea Hawkins. The activities allegedly embraced by the illegal agreement in this case are simply too diverse (unrelated acts involving arson, murder, theft, drugs, and obstruction of justice) to be tied together on the theory that participation in one activity necessarily implied awareness of others. 32 571 F.2d at 902. Despite these facts, we upheld the government's joint trial of the Elliott defendants on a single conspiracy count. We defined the RICO enterprise in Elliott to consist of at least five persons who joined together to commit crime for profit a myriopod criminal network, loosely connected but connected nonetheless. 571 F.2d at 899. Since the defendants had conspired together to participate in that enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, we upheld their joint trial despite the absence of an agreement as to any particular predicate crime. We held, in short, that (RICO's) effect in this case is to free the government from the strictures of the multiple conspiracy doctrine and to allow the joint trial of many persons accused of diversified crimes. 571 F.2d at 900. 33 Read out of context, without attention to the facts of the case or to the court's rationale, Elliott does seem to support the government's position i. e., that the defendants' participation in the same RICO enterprise is enough to tie otherwise multiple conspiracies together even where, as here, there is no agreement of any kind between the members of the two separate conspiracies. 7 Indeed, Elliott has been thus read by some courts and commentators (and, as so read, has been uniformly criticized). See United States v. Zemek, 634 F.2d 1159, 1169 n.12 (9th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 101 S.Ct. 1359, 67 L.Ed.2d 341 (1981); United States v. Boffa, 513 F.Supp. 444, 471-75 (D.Del.1980); United States v. Cryan, 490 F.Supp. 1234, 1239, 1242-44 (D.N.J.), affirmed without opinion, 636 F.2d 1211 (3d Cir. 1980); C. Bradley, Racketeers, Congress, and the Courts: An Analysis of RICO, 65 Iowa L.Rev. 837, 876-79 (1980); Note, Elliott v. United States : Conspiracy Law and the Judicial Pursuit of Organized Crime through RICO, 65 Va.L.Rev. 109 (1979). 34 To put the Elliott holding in its proper perspective, we quote our explanation of that holding at length: 35 Under the general federal conspiracy statute, the precise nature and extent of the conspiracy must be determined by reference to the agreement which embraces and defines its objects. Whether the object of a single agreement is to commit one or many crimes, it is in either case that agreement which constitutes the conspiracy which the statute punishes. Braverman v. United States, 317 U.S. 49, 53, 63 S.Ct. 99, 102, 87 L.Ed. 23 (1942). In the context of organized crime, this principle inhibited mass prosecutions because a single agreement or common objective cannot be inferred from the commission of highly diverse crimes by apparently unrelated individuals. RICO helps to eliminate this problem by creating a substantive offense which ties together these diverse parties and crimes. Thus, the object of RICO conspiracy is to violate a substantive RICO provision here, to conduct or participate in the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity and not merely to commit each of the predicate crimes necessary to demonstrate a pattern of racketeering activity. The gravamen of the conspiracy charge in this case is not that each defendant agreed to commit arson, to steal goods from interstate commerce, to obstruct justice, and to sell narcotics; rather, it is that each agreed to participate, directly and indirectly, in the affairs of the enterprise by committing two or more predicate crimes. Under the statute, it is irrelevant that each defendant participated in the enterprise's affairs through different, even unrelated crimes, so long as we may reasonably infer that each crime was intended to further the enterprise's affairs. To find a single conspiracy, we still must look for agreement on an overall objective. What Congress did was to define that objective through the substantive provisions of the Act. 36 571 F.2d at 902-03 (emphasis added; footnote omitted). 37 Elliott does indeed hold that on the facts of that case a series of agreements that under pre-RICO law would constitute multiple conspiracies could under RICO be tried as a single enterprise conspiracy. But the language of Elliott explains that what ties these conspiracies together is not the mere fact that they involve the same enterprise, but is instead as in any other conspiracy an agreement on an overall objective. What RICO does is to provide a new criminal objective by defining a new substantive crime. In Elliott, as here, that crime consists of participation in an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. The defendants in Elliott could not have been tried on a single conspiracy count under pre-RICO law because the defendants had not agreed to commit any particular crime. They were properly tried together under RICO only because the evidence established an agreement to commit a substantive RICO offense, i. e., an agreement to participate in an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. 38 To be sure, the government did not prove in Elliott that each of the conspirators had explicitly agreed with all of the others to violate the substantive RICO provision at issue. However, the government did prove that, as in a traditional chain conspiracy, the nature of the scheme was such that each defendant must necessarily have known that others were also conspiring to participate in the same enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. We found the facts sufficient to demonstrate that the defendants knew they were directly involved in an enterprise whose purpose was to profit from crime, and that each knew that the enterprise was bigger than his role in it, and that others unknown to him were participating in its affairs. 571 F.2d at 904 & n.30. The agreement among all of the defendants in Elliott was an implicit one, but it was an agreement nonetheless. 39 This reading of the Elliott holding is supported by two more recent decisions of our court. In the first case, United States v. Bright, 630 F.2d 804, 834-35 (5th Cir. 1980), we considered the validity of a single conspiracy indictment under RICO on facts similar to those now before us. The Bright conspiracy centered around the sheriff of DeSoto County, Mississippi, who was accused of conspiring with nine other persons to accept bribes in the conduct of his office. We found the evidence sufficient to support each defendant's conspiracy conviction, but found that one of the defendants with whom the sheriff had conspired (Bright) had not agreed in any way with the other eight defendants, and that consequently the government's proof had created a material variance with the indictment. 8 In essence, the government had indicted the defendants on a single conspiracy count, but the government's evidence had established two separate conspiracies: one between Bright and the sheriff, and the other among the remaining eight defendants and the sheriff. 40 Our treatment of this variance in Bright suggests, as does Elliott, that the factor that allows what otherwise would constitute multiple conspiracies to be tried together as one RICO conspiracy is a common agreement to commit the substantive RICO offense. We explained: 41 We are aware that the enterprise conspiracy is designed to avoid the pitfalls of traditional conspiracy law which results in a criminal enterprise being viewed as several small conspiracies rather than one large conspiracy because of different goals and different participants. However, we are also cognizant of the fact that the RICO conspiracy crime still requires an agreement. 42 630 F.2d at 834 n.52 (citation omitted). What underlay this portion of our decision in Bright, therefore, was the importance of the actual agreement among the parties. The mere fact that Bright had conspired to violate RICO as to the same enterprise as was involved in the other established conspiracy and had even conspired with a common hub, the sheriff was insufficient justification for a joint trial of the two multiple conspiracies. What was necessary to constitute a single conspiracy was, as in Elliott, an agreement among all of the conspirators. 43 A second recent case involving a multiple conspiracy question in the RICO context is United States v. Stratton, 649 F.2d 1066 (5th Cir. 1981). The defendants in Stratton argued, in brief, that the government had improperly charged multiple conspiracies under the guise of a single conspiracy by defining the RICO enterprise (Florida's Third Judicial Circuit) too broadly. Id., at 1074. As in the case at bar, the conspiracy alleged in Stratton involved the bribery of a state judge; and, as in this case, the defendants argued that each agreement to bribe the judge was a separate conspiracy. Since some coconspirators had no knowledge of all the illicit agreements, the defendants contended that they could not all be tried in a single conspiracy count. Id. We declined specifically to reach this argument because the facts of the case undermined the basis of the defendants' position: 44 (T)he bribery and other illegal agreements were part of a single overall scheme, and ... the leading characters in the conspiracy knew of the others' illegal activities, and, indeed, conspired with one another in furtherance of the illegal activities of the enterprise. 45 Id., at 1073 n.8. In short, all of the defendants in Stratton had conspired together to commit a substantive RICO offense to participate in the conduct of an enterprise (Florida's Third Judicial Circuit) through a pattern of racketeering activity (largely bribery). Id., at 1074-75. 46 Although Stratton did not, therefore, decide whether the government could combine totally unrelated agreements and overt acts in a single (RICO) conspiracy, we did express serious doubt as to the propriety of such a joinder. Taken to its logical extreme, a rule allowing the joint trial of otherwise unrelated conspiracies solely on the basis of their relationship to a common enterprise the rule which the government advocates in this case leads to ridiculous results: 47 For example, assuming that our own court the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was alleged to be the enterprise (as we assume would be proper under our analysis), we question whether an agreement to bribe a court official in El Paso, Texas could be part of the same conspiracy as an unrelated agreement to use a judicial office for illicit profit-making purposes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when neither the El Paso nor the Fort Lauderdale conspirators knew of the existence of the other group. 48 Id., at 1073 n.8. This extreme hypothetical problem is not fundamentally different from the case now before us. Although both conspiracies in the case at bar involved the same judge, it is not that fact which the government argues ties the two conspiracies together. Rather, it is each conspiracy's relationship to the same enterprise (the Municipal Court of the City of El Paso) that is said to provide the necessary link. Thus, the theory urged by the government would bring together individual conspiracies to bribe different judges on the same court. 49 Our review of Elliott, along with Bright and Stratton, convinces us that the government has read this authority too broadly. Elliott does not stand for the proposition that multiple conspiracies may be tried on a single enterprise conspiracy count under RICO merely because the various conspiracies involve the same enterprise. What Elliott does state is two-fold: (1) a pattern of agreements that absent RICO would constitute multiple conspiracies may be joined under a single RICO conspiracy count if the defendants have agreed to commit a substantive RICO offense; and (2) such an agreement to violate RICO may, as in the case of a traditional chain or wheel conspiracy, be established on circumstantial evidence, i. e., evidence that the nature of the conspiracy is such that each defendant must necessarily have known that others were also conspiring to violate RICO. 50 In this case the government has not attempted to prove that Walker and Maynard agreed with each other to participate in a bribery scheme with Sutherland, nor has it contended that the nature of each defendant's agreement with Sutherland was such that he or she must necessarily have known that others were also conspiring to commit racketeering offenses in the conduct of the Municipal Court. We must conclude, therefore, that the multiple conspiracy doctrine precluded the joint trial of the two multiple conspiracies involved in this case on a single RICO conspiracy count. In accordance with Kotteakos and its progeny, we must reverse the defendants' convictions if this error affected their substantial rights. 51
52 We turn next to a consideration of prejudicial effect of the variance involved in this case. As we note above, a variance is fatal only if it affects the substantial rights of the defendants. 9 53 Any analysis of the prejudicial effect of a variance between the government's indictment on a single conspiracy count and its proof of multiple conspiracies must begin with the Supreme Court's two seminal cases on this question Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 55 S.Ct. 629, 79 L.Ed. 1314 (1935), and Kotteakos v. United States, supra. Berger announced the rule that such a variance is fatal only if it has affected the substantial rights of the accused, 295 U.S. at 81-82, 55 S.Ct. at 630-631, and went on to find no such effect on the facts of that case. The conspiracy charged by the government in Berger consisted of four persons who were alleged to have agreed together to utter counterfeit federal reserve notes; what the government proved at trial was the existence of two separate conspiracies, one consisting of two of the defendants and the other consisting of three of the defendants, with one defendant common to both agreements. The Court rested its analysis in Berger on the reasons that underlie the prohibition of material variances: 54 The general rule that allegations and proof must correspond is based upon the obvious requirements (1) that the accused shall be definitely informed as to the charges against him, so that he may be enabled to present his defense and not be taken by surprise by the evidence offered at the trial; and (2) that he may be protected against another prosecution for the same offense. 55 295 U.S. at 82, 55 S.Ct. at 631. Because nothing in the record suggested that the defendants had been prejudiced in either respect by their joinder, the Court concluded that their substantial rights had not been affected. 295 U.S. at 83, 55 S.Ct. at 631. 56 In Kotteakos, by contrast, the Court did find that the defendants had been sufficiently prejudiced to justify reversal. In reaching this decision, the Court emphasized the size and complexity of the Kotteakos conspiracies: 57 On the face of things it is one thing to hold harmless the admission of evidence which took place in the Berger case, where only two conspiracies involving four persons all told were proved, and an entirely different thing to apply the same rule where, as here, only one conspiracy was charged, but eight separate ones were proved, involving at the outset thirty-two defendants. 58 328 U.S. at 766, 66 S.Ct. at 1248-49. It was this fact that made the joint trial in Kotteakos so serious an error and distinguished it from Berger: The sheer difference in numbers, both of defendants and of conspiracies proven, distinguishes the situation. Id. This does not mean, however, that the proper analysis should hinge on numbers above. A more fundamental distinction between Kotteakos and Berger can be found in the Court's treatment in Kotteakos of the reasons for the prohibition of material variances. When the government tries multiple conspiracies under a single count, an important right is at stake in addition to those cited in Berger: the right not to be tried en masse for the conglomeration of distinct and separate offenses committed by others. 328 U.S. at 775, 66 S.Ct. at 1252-53. Prejudice inhered in the Kotteakos trial not because of the number of defendants or conspiracies per se, but because of (t)he dangers of transference of guilt from one to another across the line separating conspiracies, subconsciously or otherwise .... 328 U.S. at 774, 66 S.Ct. at 1252. 10 59 The crucial question before us, therefore, is whether the defendants were substantially prejudiced by the inherent transference of guilt that was the focus of Kotteakos. 11 Our review of the record convinces us that for several reasons the defendants were not so prejudiced. We need not decide whether any one of these reasons would be sufficient to compel such a result; but taken together, the following facts lead us to the conclusion that the defendants' substantial rights were not affected. 60 First, the number of conspiracies (two) and defendants (three) is small even more so than in Berger. This is not to say that such cases may always be tried together without substantial prejudice to the defendants, but we do think that the danger implicit in the jury's confusion of different defendants and offenses and of the evidence related to each is diminished by the simpler pattern of events involved in a smaller trial. 61 Second, the evidence as to each conspiracy was clearly distinct. Kalastro's testimony involved only the Walker-Sutherland conspiracy, and the Maynard conversations involved only the Maynard-Sutherland conspiracy. In neither case did the evidence directly implicate the other conspiracy or specifically contradict any portion of the defense as to the other conspiracy. Moreover, the government conceded at trial the independence of these conspiracies, and did not seek to link the evidence on each one to the other. This does not mean that the defendants' joinder in a single trial with evidence of each conspiracy was harmless, for proof at trial of a similar conspiracy to bribe the same judge obviously makes any hypothesis of innocence more difficult to accept. Still we must conclude that prejudice is more difficult to establish where, as here, the evidence as to each conspiracy is so distinct as to render confusion between the different defendants and conspiracies unlikely. 62 Third, and most importantly, the government introduced overwhelming evidence of guilt as to all three defendants, and this evidence would have been admissible in two separate trials on individual conspiracy counts. With respect to the Walker-Sutherland conspiracy, the government had Kalastro's testimony as to Walker's meetings with Sutherland, her handing to Sutherland of tickets and cash, and her confession of the bribery scheme. With respect to the Maynard-Sutherland conspiracy, the government had the Maynard conversations in which Maynard agreed to take care of or fix a number of tickets for persons cooperating with the investigation, and in which Maynard appeared to contact Sutherland for his help. We recognize that this evidence, taken alone, allows for plausible hypotheses of innocence: (1) Walker and Sutherland could argue that Kalastro had lied, and these defendants did in fact introduce substantial impeachment evidence; and (2) Maynard and Sutherland could argue that despite the content of the Maynard conversations, Maynard had actually given his collected traffic tickets to an attorney or otherwise legally disposed of them. However, these hypotheses are rendered implausible indeed, wholly incredible by the government's additional evidence. As explained in Part II of this opinion, the government's evidence shows that a number of individual tickets that were collected by Walker and Maynard and favorably disposed of by Sutherland were handled through extraordinarily irregular procedures. By and large, these tickets found their way into Sutherland's court without the help of the Traffic Violations Bureau and without the usual formal complaints; Sutherland asked his clerks not to discuss these irregular procedures in public, paid them out of his own pocket for their extra work, and halted such procedures when he learned he was under investigation. This evidence which would have been admissible in each of two separate trials on the multiple conspiracies involved in this case most certainly obscured the importance of any potential transference of guilt between the two conspiracies. This fact, when considered along with the additional factors discussed above, convinces us that the defendants' substantial rights were not affected by their joinder under a single conspiracy count and that, accordingly, their convictions need not be reversed for variance.