Opinion ID: 546225
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Successive Federal Prosecutions of the Rouse Extortion

Text: 47 Scarfo has been the defendant in numerous federal prosecutions. Before the indictment issued in this case, we affirmed his conviction under 18 U.S.C. Secs. 2 and 1951 for conspiring to extort and extorting $1 million from a real estate developer, Rouse & Associates, in exchange for the cooperation of Councilman Leland Beloff in securing the passage of a zoning ordinance needed for Rouse's completion of a redevelopment project on the Philadelphia waterfront. United States v. Scarfo, 850 F.2d 1015 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 910, 109 S.Ct. 263, 102 L.Ed.2d 251 (1988). However, in a separate trial, he was acquitted of charges that he conducted a continuous criminal enterprise (CCE), in violation of 21 U.S.C. Sec. 848. United States v. Scarfo, E.D.Pa., No. 87-258. 48 He asserts that this RICO prosecution infringed his rights under the double jeopardy clause because the Rouse extortion offense forming the basis for his earlier conviction was charged as a predicate offense in the instant indictment. 21 He also suggests that his due process rights were violated by the successive prosecutions of the Rouse extortion and the CCE and RICO offenses in federal court, and the Testa and Falcone murders in state court because the government had knowledge of all of the offenses at the time of the first indictment and could have charged all of them at that time. According to Scarfo, the government purposefully brought successive prosecutions in order to embarrass and harass him and exhaust his economic resources to defend himself. Scarfo's Reply Brief at 10. 49 This argument with respect to double jeopardy on the facts cannot possibly be accepted. The Rouse extortion was only one of the 32 predicate acts which the jury found that Scarfo had committed. Thus, even if we deleted the Rouse act, we would affirm the convictions. See United States v. Riccobene, 709 F.2d 214, 228 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 849, 104 S.Ct. 157, 78 L.Ed.2d 145 (1983). In any event, Scarfo's arguments on this point are controlled by binding precedent in this Circuit. 50 In United States v. Grayson, 795 F.2d 278 (3d Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1054, 107 S.Ct. 927, 93 L.Ed.2d 978 (1987), we held that prosecution for a RICO offense after an earlier conviction in federal court for a predicate offense is permissible under the double jeopardy clause. We began our analysis in Grayson with the observation that RICO's language and legislative history clearly evince Congress's intent to allow separate prosecutions and cumulative punishment of predicate offenses and RICO offenses. Id. at 283. 22 In view of that observation, we went on to consider whether such separate prosecutions are constitutional under the double jeopardy clause. We decided that a RICO offense is not, in a literal sense, the 'same' offense as one of the predicate offenses, as a RICO violation requires proof of a pattern of racketeering and is intended to deter continuous criminal conduct. Id. In contrast, the predicate offenses are intended to deter discrete criminal acts, in Grayson, individual narcotics violations. Accordingly, we held that the double jeopardy clause does not bar a subsequent RICO prosecution which is based, in part, on predicate offenses for which the defendant already has been prosecuted. Accord United States v. Schell, 775 F.2d 559, 568 (4th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1098, 106 S.Ct. 1498, 89 L.Ed.2d 898 (1986); 23 United States v. Licavoli, 725 F.2d at 1049-50. In view of Grayson, the inclusion of the Rouse extortion as a predicate offense in the RICO charges was consistent with the double jeopardy clause, notwithstanding Scarfo's previous conviction for that extortion. 24 51 Scarfo has urged us to reconsider the double jeopardy implications of successive prosecutions for predicate offenses and RICO offenses in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Grady v. Corbin, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990), which, in his view, implicitly overruled Grayson. 25 We believe that Scarfo reads Grady too broadly, as the reasoning in that decision logically extends only to offenses arising from a single discrete event. We do not think that the Supreme Court meant to imply that the double jeopardy clause forecloses successive prosecutions in cases of compound-complex felonies such as RICO, which involve several criminal acts occurring at different times in different places. 52 In Grady, the government sought to prosecute the defendant on homicide and assault charges stemming from a fatal automobile collision, after he had pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor traffic offenses arising from the same incident, driving while intoxicated and failing to keep to the right of the median. At the time the guilty pleas were received, the court was not informed that the collision had resulted in a fatality. 110 S.Ct. at 2088. A few weeks later, the court imposed minimum sentences for the offenses pursuant to the recommendation of an assistant district attorney who was unaware that another member of the District Attorney's Office was gathering evidence for the homicide prosecution. Id. at 2089. After the defendant was indicted on the homicide and assault charges, the prosecution filed a bill of particulars which identified three reckless or negligent acts upon which it would rely in proving its case: 1) operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated; 2) failing to keep to the right of the median; and 3) driving at a speed too fast for the weather and road conditions. Id. 53 The Supreme Court held that the double jeopardy clause barred the homicide and assault prosecution to the extent that the state, to establish essential elements of the offenses charged in the prosecution, would endeavor to prove conduct for which the defendant already had been prosecuted. Id. at 2093. 26 The Court acknowledged that under the test of Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304, 52 S.Ct. 180, 182, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), the misdemeanor traffic offenses were not the same offense as homicide or assault, as each required proof of facts which the others did not. 110 S.Ct. at 2092-93. However, it decided that, in cases of multiple prosecutions, the double jeopardy clause requires more than a technical comparison of the statutory elements of the successively charged offenses. Id. Thus, under Grady, even if the offense charged in the second prosecution survives the Blockburger test, the prosecution will be barred if the state intends to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the same conduct forming the basis of the earlier conviction. 54 We realize that the language employed by the Supreme Court in its formulation of the same conduct test could be interpreted as extending double jeopardy protection to all situations where the government intends again to prove conduct constituting an offense subject to an earlier conviction. But we would not be justified in reading Grady so expansively. The Court in Grady relied substantially on Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410, 100 S.Ct. 2260, 65 L.Ed.2d 228 (1980) 27 and Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977), 28 the holdings of which implicitly were confined to situations involving discrete criminal events. Indeed, in Brown, the Court indicated that its holding, that a prior conviction for a lesser included offense bars a subsequent prosecution for the greater offense, was required by the insular natures of the offenses charged in the two prosecutions, joyriding and auto theft: The Double Jeopardy Clause is not such a fragile guarantee that prosecutors can avoid its limitations by the simple expedient of dividing a single crime into a series of temporal or spatial units. Id. at 169, 97 S.Ct. at 2227 (emphasis added). 55 The double jeopardy analysis in Brown and Grady, its most recent progeny, cannot easily be transposed to the RICO context because by definition, a pattern of racketeering under RICO is made up of a series of temporal or spatial units. Instead, we consider the double jeopardy problem posed by the successive prosecutions here to be more closely analogous to that in Garrett v. United States, 471 U.S. 773, 105 S.Ct. 2407, 85 L.Ed.2d 764 (1985), which rejected a double jeopardy claim based on the government's use of a drug offense for which a conviction had been obtained as a predicate offense in a later prosecution for engaging in a continuous criminal enterprise (CCE), in violation of 21 U.S.C. Sec. 848. The Court in Garrett assumed without deciding that under the Blockburger test, a predicate narcotics offense is a lesser included offense of a CCE offense, id. at 790, 105 S.Ct. at 2417, but nevertheless rejected the defendant's attempt to invoke the rule in Brown v. Ohio as bar to the CCE prosecution. The Court stated: 56 We think there is a good deal of difference between the classic relation of the 'lesser included offense' to the greater offense presented in Brown, on the one hand, and the relationship between the [predicate] marihuana offense and the CCE charge involved in this case, on the other. The defendant in Brown had stolen an automobile and driven it for several days. He had engaged in a single course of conduct-driving a stolen car. The very same conduct would support a misdemeanor prosecution for joyriding or a felony prosecution for auto theft, depending only on the defendant's state of mind while he engaged in the conduct in question. Every moment of his conduct was as relevant to the joyriding charge as it was to the auto theft charge. 57 Id. at 787, 105 S.Ct. at 2416 (emphasis added). 58 After reviewing the defendant's drug trafficking activities, which spanned 5 1/2 years and several states, the Court concluded that the significant differences between the facts before it and those in Brown 59 caution[ed] against ready transposition of the 'lesser included offense' principles of double jeopardy from the classically simple situation presented in Brown to the multilayered conduct, both as to time and place, involved in this case. 60 Id. at 789, 105 S.Ct. at 2416. 61 The Court also considered that the defendant's CCE offense continued past the time he was indicted for the predicate offense, and was unwilling to force the Government's hand by compelling it either to withhold prosecution for the predicate offense until it was prepared to seek an indictment for the CCE offense, or to limit the scope of the CCE prosecution by bringing it at the time of the indictment for the predicate offense. Id. at 790, 105 S.Ct. at 2417. 62 We conclude that Grady, which finds its roots in single transaction cases such as Brown, is no more applicable in the instant circumstances than Brown was in 63 Garrett. 29 It is true that to the extent of the Rouse extortion, the government proved the same conduct needed to sustain the guilty verdict in the Rouse extortion trial. However, as was the case with the CCE offense in Garrett, Scarfo's RICO offense was far more extensive than the Rouse extortion. Moreover, Scarfo's racketeering activities continued after his indictment on January 5, 1987, for the Rouse extortion. The evidence showed that the RICO conspiracy extended to October, 1987 and that at least one of the predicate offenses supporting Scarfo's RICO convictions, his participation in the illegal sports bookmaking business, continued through April, 1987. As the Supreme Court observed in Garrett, [o]ne who insists that the music stop and the piper be paid at a particular point must at least have stopped dancing himself before he may seek such an accounting. 471 U.S. at 790, 105 S.Ct. at 2417. 64 Thus, we reject Scarfo's double jeopardy argument on the basis of Grayson, in which we decided that successive prosecutions of RICO and its underlying predicates are constitutionally permissible, and Garrett, which distinguished single course of conduct crimes, like those in Brown and Grady, from compound-complex crimes, like those at issue here. However significant Grady v. Corbin may prove to be in cases of simple felonies, we are confident that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the compound-complex crimes at issue here. 65 Scarfo's argument that his successive prosecutions violated due process also lacks merit. 30 We acknowledge that successive prosecutions may work hardship on the defendant. Also, from the standpoint of judicial economy, it is preferable for the government to consolidate all charges in a single indictment. However, we are not prepared to say that it was a violation of Scarfo's due process rights for the government to charge the offenses in the manner it did. We could not possibly hold that the inclusion of the Falcone and Testa murders as predicate racketeering acts was overreaching on the part of the government, as the earlier murder prosecutions occurred in state court, beyond the control of the United States Attorneys involved in this case. As for the successive federal prosecutions, Scarfo's argument, which might best be characterized as an allegation of prosecutorial vindictiveness, presupposes that the government had available to it all of the evidence adduced in this case at the time of the Rouse and CCE trials and that it would have been practical to try the offenses together. Although at least two of the government witnesses in this case, DelGiorno and Caramandi also testified at the Rouse trial, Scarfo, 850 F.2d at 1017, we have no way of knowing whether other evidence used to convict Scarfo and his co-conspirators was known to the government at the time of the earlier trials. Furthermore, as the government pointed out at oral argument, the CCE trial itself was a large trial which involved 27 defendants. Tr. of Oral Argument at 149. Had the government attempted to prosecute the RICO and CCE offenses together, the cases may have been completely unmanageable. 66 As other courts have pointed out, [p]rosecutors have traditionally enjoyed discretion in deciding which of multiple charges against a defendant are to be prosecuted or whether they are all to be prosecuted at the same time. United States v. Cardall, 885 F.2d 656, 666 (10th Cir.1989). See also United States v. Becker, 892 F.2d 265, 269 (3d Cir.1989) (successive prosecutions of two separate drug conspiracies did not constitute harassment); United States v. Partyka, 561 F.2d 118, 124 (8th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1037, 98 S.Ct. 773, 54 L.Ed.2d 785 (1978). This is not to say that multiple prosecutions may never result in a denial of due process. See Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974) (vindictive prosecution brought in retaliation to defendant's invocation of procedural rights violates due process). However, to raise successfully a due process claim, the defendant must affirmatively establish vindictiveness, as the fact of multiple prosecutions, standing alone, does not prove an abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Considering that Scarfo has pointed to no evidence of prosecutorial abuse but relies solely on the fact of multiple prosecutions and that, barring double jeopardy problems, a single trial is not a  'constitutional imperative,'  Cardall, 885 F.2d at 666 (citation omitted), we reject Scarfo's final challenge to his successive prosecutions. 67