Opinion ID: 3173815
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Shamrock Murders

Text: Vernace argues that the Shamrock Murders were not related to the activities of the Gambino crime family. Those murders, he contends, resulted instead from a mere ʺpersonal dispute over a spilled drink.ʺ Appellantʹs Br. at 46. To begin, Vernaceʹs theory carries with it an air of implausibility. A jury need not credit a theory that is not supported ʺby reason and common sense.ʺ Grey v. Heckler, 721 F.2d 41, 50 (2d Cir. 1983) (Van Graafeiland, J., ‐ 13 ‐ dissenting). Vernace argues that a mere spilled drink somehow cascaded into two brutal, and very public, murders. But the jury, seeking to make sense of the Shamrock Murders, could have reasonably rejected this theory and found instead that the Shamrock Murders were related to the activities of the Gambino crime family. From the evidence, the jury could have reasonably inferred that Riccardi enlisted Vernace and Barlin to kill the two bar owners for disrespecting him as a Gambino associate and to uphold the reputation of the Gambino crime family. Riccardi was upset over the spilled drink, but may also have wanted to demonstrate to DʹAgnese and Godkin that the Gambino crime family ʺr[an] th[e] place.ʺ App. at 220. During his interactions at the Shamrock Bar, Riccardi suﬀered an aﬀront (real or perceived) to himself and to his authority as a Gambino associate, and, by extension, to the family. Vernace, in turn, helped him address the aﬀront. That is, a reasonable jury could have concluded Vernace went so far as to commit murder in a crowded bar because such a public display related to preserving (and even enhancing) the reputation of the Gambino crime family and its members. ‐ 14 ‐ But the Shamrock Murders link back to the Gambino crime family in another way. The jury could also have reasonably concluded that Vernace participated in the Shamrock Murders to further his own reputation, thereby enabling him to more eﬀectively carry out the activities of the Gambino crime family. The jury heard testimony that one of the goals of the Gambino crime family was ʺ[t]o make moneyʺ through illicit means. Id. at 114. By building their own reputations, Gambino members gained ʺrespect in the streetʺ that they could directly leverage in the familyʹs loansharking and extortion activities. Govʹt App. at 65‐66 (ʺ[If] people are afraid of you, itʹs easier for you to make money for the Gambino family.ʺ). For example, the Government presented a secretly recorded conversation where one of Vernaceʹs associates used the Shamrock Murders to collect loansharking debts by telling the victim that Vernace was ʺthe real thingʺ and after warning that those sorts of homicides ʺhappen[] every day.ʺ Id. at 12. The jury could have reasonably concluded that Vernace found it valuable to participate in the Shamrock Murders because doing so would later help him carry out other activities that benefitted the Gambino crime family. ‐ 15 ‐ Our case law supports the proposition that Vernaceʹs conduct therefore lies within the heartland of what RICO targets. We have noted that ʺ[t]he question of whether acts form a pattern ʹrarely is a problem with a criminal enterprise, as distinct from a lawful enterprise that commits occasional criminal acts.ʹʺ Minicone, 960 F.2d at 1108 (quoting United States v. Masters, 924 F.2d 1362, 1366 (7th Cir. 1991)); see Daidone, 471 F.3d at 376 (ʺ[S]prawling, complex enterprises, like the Luchese crime organization, are the prototypical targets of RICO.ʺ). This is because the predicate acts will share common goals (such as increasing or protecting the ʺposition of the enterpriseʺ or its members) and common victims (such as ʺthose who threaten its goalsʺ) and will draw from ʺthe same pool of associates . . . of the enterprise.ʺ Daidone, 471 F.3d at 376; see also Burden, 600 F.3d at 218‐19 (finding relatedness where ʺviolence enhanced the level of respectʺ for the racketeering enterprise and ʺgarner[ed] [members] respectʺ). In this vein, it would have been reasonable for the jury to conclude that the Shamrock Murders related to the Gambino crime family because Vernace set out to promote the Gambino crime familyʹs reputation (and in turn, his own) when he participated in the murders of DʹAgnese and Godkin . ‐ 16 ‐ Nonetheless, Vernace contends that his case is indistinguishable from United States v. Bruno, where we concluded that the evidence was insuﬃcient to prove that two shootings (which we characterized as ʺsimply personal mattersʺ) were related to New York Cityʹs Genovese crime family. 383 F.3d at 85. In Bruno, the defendant, a Genovese associate, recruited two of his cousins (one of whom recruited another friend) to murder two other Genovese associates. We noted that ʺnone of the shooters was a made member of the Genovese Family[,] nor were the Shootings themselves sanctioned by the family,ʺ and that it was ʺentirely reasonableʺ to conclude that the shootings were personal matters related to the defendant owing the victims tens of thousands of dollars in loansharking debts, the victimsʹ suspected role in previously setting the defendant up to be robbed at a poker game, and the defendantʹs personal animosity toward the victims. Id. at 74 & n.1, 85. We therefore concluded in Bruno that the defendant committed the shootings for personal reasons unrelated to the Genovese crime family. Id. at 85. Vernace asserts that, like the shootings in Bruno, the Shamrock Murders stemmed from a personal dispute, none of the participants was an inducted member, the murders were not sanctioned, Riccardi obtained assistance from friends who were not in his crew, higher ups ‐ 17 ‐ considered killing Riccardi for his involvement, and the participants laid low after the murders. Vernace makes too much of the similarities between his case and Bruno. For one, where it was understandable in Bruno that the defendant would violently retaliate for personal reasons against two individuals ‐‐ who sought to collect tens of thousands of dollars of loansharking debts from him and who he suspected had robbed him in the past ‐‐ the personal angle here is far weaker and not one the jury was obliged to credit. Further, even if the dispute at the Shamrock Bar was initially personal, it grew to be much more. For Vernace and Barlin, the spilled drink was not entirely personal: They were uninvolved; they were not there. We certainly did not hold in Bruno that a jury must find that all predicate acts with a personal dimension are unrelated to a charged RICO conspiracy. As to the other factual similarities with Bruno that Vernace draws on, the jury could have rejected the weight that Vernace now assigns to that evidence. The fact that the three participants in the Shamrock Murders were only Gambino associates and not inducted soldiers was not dispositive. We look at the criminal activities in which alleged participants in the racketeering ‐ 18 ‐ enterprise engage, not merely the labels that the enterprise uses to describe them. See United States v. Brady, 26 F.3d 282, 289‐90 (2d Cir. 1994) (holding that ʺsignificant criminal activity engaged in on behalf of the Family by associatesʺ who were not ʺmade membersʺ could support RICO liability). Likewise, the evidence that the murders were not sanctioned by the Gambino crime family, the family sought to discipline Riccardi, and Vernace went into hiding did not preclude a finding that the murders were related to the familyʹs activities. See Bruno, 383 F.3d at 84 (holding that predicate acts need not be ʺin furtherance ofʺ the enterprise). After all, Vernace was not punished for participating in the Shamrock Murders ‐‐ he was, indeed, ultimately entrusted with ruling authority. Accordingly, the evidence here was suﬃcient to support a reasonable juryʹs conclusion that the Shamrock Murders were related to the Gambino crime family.