Opinion ID: 572629
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The RICO Convictions

Text: 70 Paccione, Vulpis, and the corporate defendants contend that their RICO convictions should be set aside on the ground that some of the alleged mail frauds listed as predicate acts were not within the reach of the mail fraud statute. We have dealt with most of the mail frauds above, and since we have found that they were within the scope of § 1341, there is no basis for challenging their use as RICO predicate acts. One alleged predicate act, however, was flawed as defendants contend. 71 Racketeering predicate act 12 (not to be confused with count 12) charged that the individual defendants and Environmental Contractors violated § 1341 by using the mails to defraud the State of New York of money and property by awarding a lucrative waste transporter permit to [Environmental Contractors]. Notwithstanding its reference to money and property, this allegation treated the license itself as the property of which the State was defrauded. As the government concedes on appeal, this was invalid under Schwartz and Novod. Since this allegation was insufficient to charge an offense under § 1341, it was also insufficient to serve as a mail-fraud RICO predicate act. 72 This deficiency, however, does not require reversal. The jury returned a painstaking special verdict in which it made findings as to each of several defendants with respect to 17 alleged predicate acts (many with subparts). Of the defendants found guilty on the RICO counts, only Paccione was found by the jury to have committed predicate act 12, and thus only he has standing to challenge his RICO conviction on the ground that predicate act 12 was insufficient. We reject Paccione's challenge because, for the reasons below, we conclude that the error in submitting act 12 to the jury was harmless beyond any reasonable doubt, see Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a); Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). 73 In addition to predicate act 12, the jury found that Paccione had committed eight predicate acts, to wit, acts 1, 3, 4, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. These eight remaining predicate acts, which suffer no defects, are an ample basis for Paccione's convictions on the RICO counts. We recognize that the mere fact that a jury finds that a given defendant committed three or more predicate acts does not necessarily mean that it will convict that defendant of RICO charges--witness the fact that the jury in this case found McDonald not guilty on the RICO counts though it found that he had committed six of the alleged predicate acts (acts 12-17). But this treatment of McDonald gives us no basis for believing the jury might have found Paccione not guilty on the RICO counts if predicate act 12 had not been submitted to it. Rather, the jury's findings show that predicate act 12 simply was not an ingredient in its RICO verdicts. Thus, the jury found McDonald had committed that act, but it acquitted him on the RICO charges; it found Vulpis had not committed predicate act 12, but it convicted him on the RICO charges; and the corporate defendants were not alleged to have committed predicate act 12, and the jury convicted them on the RICO counts. The RICO convictions of Vulpis and the corporate defendants were based on the jury's findings that they committed predicate acts 1, 3, and 4, and no other predicate acts. Given all of these findings and verdicts, including the jury's finding that Paccione too committed predicate acts 1, 3, and 4 (plus five other validly submitted acts), we have no doubt that the jury would have convicted him on the RICO counts if predicate act 12 had not been submitted.