Opinion ID: 546225
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: constitutionality of the rico statute

Text: 26 Scarfo and Staino contend that the RICO statute is unconstitutionally vague because the pattern of racketeering requirement is not defined with sufficient clarity to place defendants on notice as to what conduct falls within its parameters. 14 Appellants rely heavily on Justice Scalia's concurrence in H.J., Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 2893, 106 L.Ed.2d 195 (1989), which hinted that the RICO statute might be vulnerable to a vagueness attack because the pattern of racketeering requirement is not susceptible of precise definition. Id. 109 S.Ct. at 2909. Regardless of whether in other circumstances the uncertain reach of the RICO statute might raise problems of constitutional dimension, we find that the statute is perfectly clear as applied to appellants' conduct and therefore reject their vagueness challenge. 15 27 In H.J., Inc., a class of telephone customers sued Northwestern Bell under RICO's civil liability provisions, 18 U.S.C. Secs. 1964(a) and (c), alleging that the defendant company had engaged in a scheme to bribe members of a state public utility commission to obtain favorable rate rulings. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the complaint under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) on the ground that the plaintiffs' allegation of a single unlawful scheme did not satisfy RICO's pattern requirement, which it held requires proof of multiple schemes. 829 F.2d 648, 650 (8th Cir.1987), aff'g, 648 F.Supp. 419 (D.Minn.1986). The Supreme Court reversed, holding that a RICO pattern may be predicated upon a single criminal scheme as long as sufficient indicia of continuity are present. 109 S.Ct. at 2902. 28 The Court explained that RICO's legislative history indicates that a pattern of racketeering must be based upon related predicates which amount to or pose a threat of continued criminal activity. H.J., Inc., 109 S.Ct. at 2900 (citing Sedima, S.P.R.L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479, 105 S.Ct. 3275, 87 L.Ed.2d 346 (1985)). However, while the Court conceded the difficulties inherent in formulating a precise standard for the continuity requirement, it rejected the defendant's contention that the requirement can be satisfied only through proof of multiple criminal schemes. Id. 109 S.Ct. at 2901. According to the Court, evidence of multiple schemes is highly probative of the continuous nature of the defendant's criminal conduct but is not a necessary element of a RICO pattern. Under H.J., Inc., a pattern also may be established through proof that predicate acts forming a single criminal scheme were a regular way of conducting defendant's ongoing legitimate business, such that absent intervention, they were likely to extend into the future, or through proof that a series of related predicates in fact extended over a substantial period of time. Id. at 2902. As the Court suggested, in view of the variety of ways that continuity may be established, defining a RICO pattern necessarily is a highly fact specific task. 29 Justice Scalia, in his concurrence, felt that the Court's murky discussion failed to provide sufficient guidance as to the outer boundaries of a RICO pattern. Id. at 2908 (Scalia, J., concurring). In particular, as pertinent to this appeal, he wrote: 30 No constitutional challenge to this law has been raised in the present case, and so that issue is not before us. That the highest Court in the land has been unable to derive from this statute anything more than today's meager guidance bodes ill for the day when that challenge is presented. 31 Id. at 2909. 32 Predictably, appellants seize upon this language in arguing that the RICO pattern requirement is so vague as to offend due process. 33 A statute is unconstitutionally vague when it either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of ordinary intelligence must necessarily guess as to its meaning and differ as to its application. Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391, 46 S.Ct. 126, 127, 70 L.Ed. 322 (1926). See also Rode v. Dellarciprete, 845 F.2d 1195, 1199 (3d Cir.1988); Aiello v. City of Wilmington, 623 F.2d 845, 850 (3d Cir.1980). However, outside the First Amendment context, a party has standing to raise a vagueness challenge only insofar as the statute is vague as applied to his or her specific conduct. New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 767-69, 102 S.Ct. 3348, 3360-61, 73 L.Ed.2d 1113 (1982); Rode, 845 F.2d at 1200. 16 As stated in Ferber, this standing requirement reflects two cardinal principles of our constitutional order: the personal nature of constitutional rights, ... and prudential limitations on constitutional adjudication. 458 U.S. at 767, 102 S.Ct. at 3360. 34 In light of Ferber, our inquiry must focus on whether persons of ordinary intelligence would know that the repeated commission of murder, extortion, illegal gambling, and usury offenses in furtherance of an organized crime enterprise constitute a pattern of racketeering under RICO. If so, then we need not further consider whether the pattern requirement is unconstitutionally vague as applied to the hypothetical conduct of third parties not before us, as appellants lack standing to assert the rights of those third parties. 35 As applied to the appellants' criminal activities, the relationship plus continuity test for a pattern is readily satisfied. The criminal conduct involved here was not isolated but extended over a substantial time, and the predicate acts cannot fairly be characterized as unrelated as they were committed pursuant to the orders of key members of the enterprise in furtherance of its affairs. Indeed, the independent existence of the enterprise connotes continuity and relatedness because the evidence showed overwhelmingly that the criminal agenda of the enterprise extended beyond the commission of any individual predicate acts: one joined LCN not to commit any one set of crimes but in fact to commit any crime that the boss wanted done. See United States v. Indelicato, 865 F.2d 1370, 1384 (2d Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 56, 107 L.Ed.2d 24 (1989) ([I]f the racketeering acts were performed at the behest of an organized crime group, that fact would tend to belie any notion that the racketeering acts were sporadic or isolated.). In sum, appellants' argument that they lacked notice that their conduct constituted a pattern under RICO is utterly devoid of merit, as they have engaged in a classic pattern of racketeering under RICO. 36 The result reached here is consistent with United States v. Angiulo, 897 F.2d 1169 (1st Cir.1990), which held that, however vague the statute may be as applied to legitimate businesses, its application to the criminal activities of organized crime families is so clear as to be beyond peradventure. Id. at 1180 (A person of ordinary intelligence could not help but realize that illegal activities of an organized crime family fall within the ambit of RICO's pattern of racketeering activity.). See also Freeman, Jr. and McSlarrow, RICO and the Due Process Void for Vagueness Test, 45 Bus.Law. 1003, 1009 (1990) (suggesting that the vagueness problem identified in H.J. Inc. may be more pronounced in civil RICO cases than in criminal prosecutions because private plaintiffs are not politically accountable for their exercise of prosecutorial discretion). We think it is clear that the potential due process problems noted by Justice Scalia in H.J., Inc. are not present in organized crime cases. Unlike in H.J., Inc., which involved allegations of corruption within the ranks of a legitimate business, the application of RICO to the activities of the Scarfo crime family could not have come as a surprise to the members of the family. In fact, we have doubts that a successful vagueness challenge to RICO ever could be raised by defendants in an organized crime case. Certainly appellants' attempt to do so has been singularly unpersuasive.