Opinion ID: 537726
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Imposition of Interest

Text: 247 Defendants' final challenge pertains to the trial court's order that defendants must pay interest to the government on certain forfeited real estate. Before beginning our legal analysis, we state the facts and defendants' arguments. 248 In its forfeiture verdict, the jury found that 42% of the current fair market value of Gennaro's, Francesco's, and Donato's interests in their Friend and Canal Streets property was forfeitable as proceeds or profits of their racketeering activities under Sec. 1963(a)(1). The Canal Street property had been transferred to the Angiulos by Joseph Palladino. Forty-two percent of the property's market value in 1986 was deemed equivalent to the proceeds or profits realized from a $200,000 extortionate debt owed to the Angiulos by Palladino--a debt that was cancelled when Palladino transferred the property to the Angiulos. 249 The jury's verdict was returned on February 26, 1986. It was not until February 17, 1989, however, that the district court issued its final judgment of forfeiture. At a post-verdict hearing held prior to this final forfeiture judgment, the court entertained suggestions from counsel as to how to treat the forfeitable 42% interest in the property. The government argued that it should receive 42% of the property's value at the time of final judgment rather than 42% of its value at the time of the jury's verdict, especially given the substantial period of time since the jury's verdict. Defendants proposed that the government receive 42% of the property's value at the time of the jury's verdict, plus some recognizable market rate of interest on that amount for the intervening years between the verdict and the final judgment. 250 The court selected the latter alternative. It ordered the forfeiture of 42% of the market value of the Canal Street property as of the date of the jury's verdict and also required defendants to pay interest of 8.6% per year on that amount for the period from the date of the jury's verdict to the date of the court's order. Defendants now argue that nothing in the RICO forfeiture statute authorizes the award of such interest and the trial court's imposition of interest should be overturned. We disagree. 251 First, we do not think that defendants can properly challenge on appeal a proposal they themselves offered to the trial court. Having persuaded the court to adopt their proposal, rather than the government's, defendants should not be allowed to circumvent the judicial process by challenging on appeal the trial court's decision to adopt it. Cf. United States v. Rosenthal, 793 F.2d 1214, 1245 (11th Cir.1986) (stating that appellant could not challenge, on appeal, testimony that his own attorney had elicited at trial), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 919, 107 S.Ct. 1377, 94 L.Ed.2d 692 (1987); United States v. Truitt, 440 F.2d 1070, 1071 (5th Cir.) (similar), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 847, 92 S.Ct. 150, 30 L.Ed.2d 84 (1971). 252 In any event, we find that the trial court had sufficient discretion to impose interest in order to protect the government's interests in the forfeitable Canal Street property. We recognize that the RICO forfeiture statute does not expressly provide for the imposition of interest. RICO's provisions, however, were intended to be liberally construed to accomplish the statute's objectives. See, e.g., Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 26-28, 104 S.Ct. 296, 302-03, 78 L.Ed.2d 17 (1983); United States v. Lizza Industries, Inc., 775 F.2d 492, 498 (2d Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1082, 106 S.Ct. 1459, 89 L.Ed.2d 716 (1986). The forfeiture provision, in particular, constitutes one of the crucial weapons in the RICO arsenal and should be liberally construed to accomplish its purpose of attacking the economic power of illegal enterprises. See Russello, 464 U.S. at 26-28, 104 S.Ct. at 302-03. 253 Employing this principle of liberal construction, we uphold the trial court's imposition of interest on the Canal Street property. If interest had not been imposed, the defendants effectively would have been allowed to pocket three years worth of interest earned on a real estate investment that, in large part, was acquired with the proceeds of an extortionate loan. Without the imposition of interest, the three year delay between the verdict and the final forfeiture judgment would have enabled the defendants to continue to realize investment earnings on the profits of their past racketeering activity. This cannot have been the intent of Congress when it drafted the expansive RICO forfeiture provision and urged its liberal construction. We uphold the trial court's imposition of interest as justified to protect the government's interest in forfeitable property and to prevent defendants' continued unlawful gain from that property. But cf. Braxton v. United States, 858 F.2d 650, 655 (11th Cir.1988) (construing RICO's forfeiture provisions more literally).