Opinion ID: 393273
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Trial of Multiple Conspiracies Under a Single RICO

Text: 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