Opinion ID: 742598
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Facilitation of Murder as Racketeering Activity

Text: 142 RICO defines racketeering activity to include any act ... involving murder ... which is chargeable under State law and punishable by imprisonment for more than one year. 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1)(A). The RICO count of the indictment alleged that Miller had engaged in a number of predicate acts, including the following: 143 In or about the summer of 1987, within the Eastern District of New York, the defendant GERALD MILLER, a/k/a/ Prince, believing it probable that he was rendering aid to a person who intended to commit murder, knowingly and intentionally engaged in conduct which provided such person with means and opportunity for the commission of that crime, and which in fact aided in the commission of that crime, namely, the August 6, 1987 murder of Isaac Bolden, a/k/a Just Me, in violation of New York Penal Law Sections 115.05 and 20.00. 144 (Indictment count one, racketeering act 10.) Miller argues that criminal facilitation cannot be viewed as an act involving murder because murder is an intentional and violent crime, and the New York Penal Law neither requires that the facilitator have intended that the underlying crime be committed nor classifies facilitation itself as a violent felony. This sophistic argument is far from the mark. 145 RICO provides that racketeering activity refers to any of a number of federal or state crimes. See 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1). Its references to federal law, see id. § 1961(1)(B)-(F), are specific, citing various statutes by name or by United States Code title and section; its references to state law, see id. § 1961(1)(A), are not to chapter and verse but are instead generic, serv[ing] ... to identify generally the kind of activity made illegal by the federal statute, United States v. Bagaric, 706 F.2d 42, 62-63 (2d Cir.) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 840, 104 S.Ct. 134, 78 L.Ed.2d 128 (1983). RICO was not intended to incorporate the elements of the penal codes of the various states where acts of racketeering occurred, id. at 62, but only to provide general substantive frames of reference. 146 By defining racketeering activity to include any act ... involving murder, 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1)(A) (emphasis added), Congress made it clear that the RICO defendant's act need not be murder, so long as it directly concerns murder. See generally Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1191 (1976) (defining involve to mean, inter alia, concern directly). Thus, in United States v. Ruggiero, 726 F.2d 913 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 831, 105 S.Ct. 118, 83 L.Ed.2d 60 (1984), noting that Congress intended that RICO be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes, we ruled that conspiracy to murder in violation of New York's Penal Law ... is an 'act involving ' murder and therefore may constitute 'racketeering activity' within the meaning of the RICO statute. Id. at 919 (emphasis added). 147 The New York Penal Law provisions cited in the racketeering act 10 allegation against Miller are §§ 115.05 and 20.00. Section 115.05 provides that a defendant is guilty of criminal facilitation, a Class C felony, when, believing it probable that he is rendering aid to a person who intends to commit a class A felony [e.g., murder, see N.Y. Pen. L. § 125.25 (McKinney 1987) ], he engages in conduct which provides such person with means or opportunity for the commission thereof and which in fact aids such person to commit such class A felony. N.Y. Pen. L. § 115.05 (McKinney 1987). A Class C felony such as facilitation is punishable by imprisonment for 1-15 years. See N.Y. Pen. L. §§ 70.00 (McKinney 1987). Section 20.00 imposes liability on one who, with the mental culpability required for the commission thereof, ... intentionally aid[ed] the perpetrator to commit the substantive offense. Id. § 20.00 (McKinney 1987). Such a person is punishable as a principal. See id. Practice Commentary. 148 Insofar as the underlying substantive state offense is murder, we have no difficulty in concluding that the accessorial offenses described in these state-law provisions involve murder within the meaning of RICO. Nor have we any difficulty in concluding that the conduct at issue here involved murder. Where a defendant is asked for and provides information that he reasonably knows is meant to enable the inquirer to commit a murder, he has plainly performed an act that directly concerns murder. We conclude that the criminal facilitation charge against Miller was a proper RICO predicate. 149