Opinion ID: 387921
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: a plan or design for a venture or undertaking

Text: 25 b. venture, undertaking, project; esp: an undertaking that is difficult, complicated, or has a strong element of risk 26 c. a unit of economic organization or activity 27 d. any systematic purposeful activity or type of activity. 28 These definitions are all absolutely neutral on the question of whether a particular enterprise is lawful or unlawful. 29 Congress itself, however, recognized that the meaning of enterprise was of critical importance in the statute and hence provided a supplementary statutory definition. 18 U.S.C. § 1961 begins with definitions, and the fourth one reads:  'enterprise' includes any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity ; .... (Emphasis added.) It should be noted that in this definition, the word enterprise is used without any modifiers, and the same word is employed throughout Title IX without modifiers (except, as we will point out below, the word any). 30 Obviously Congress would have known how to characterize an illegal enterprise or a legal enterprise had it seen fit to do so. Its choice of the single word enterprise and its actual definition of it seems to us of major importance. 31 Over and above the fact that Congress used the word enterprise without modifiers, its definition clearly includes both legal entities and any ... group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity. 32 Further, under the second section of the statute entitled Prohibited Activities, subsections (b) and (c), Congress employed the word enterprise, modified by the word any; thus, subsection (c) provides: It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise's affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt. The use of the term any before enterprise helps make clear that enterprise is used in an all encompassing sense. This certainly includes both legal and illegal enterprises. In this regard the Second Circuit in United States v. Altese, has said: 33 In the light of the continued repetition of the word any we cannot say that a reading of the statute evinces a Congressional intent to eliminate illegitimate businesses from the orbit of the Act. On the contrary we find ourselves obliged to say that Title IX in its entirety says in clear, precise and unambiguous language the use of the word any 4 that all enterprises that are conducted through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debts fall within the interdiction of the Act. 34 4. Any is defined in Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, as follows: Indicating a person, thing, etc., as one selected without restriction or limitation of choice, with the implication that everyone is open to selection without exception; all, taken distributively; every; used especially in assertions with emphasis on unlimited scope. 35 United States v. Altese, 542 F.2d 104, 106 (2d Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1039, 97 S.Ct. 736, 50 L.Ed.2d 750 (1977). 36 Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 is entitled Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. By these terms Congress included both ostensibly legitimate businesses availed of for criminal purposes (such as Edwin's Jewelry Store, 2 the Spencer's Jewelry Store Co., of Middletown, Ohio, 3 and the Carter Exterminating Company of Cleveland 4 and the wholly corrupt organizations such as the narcotics distribution organizations operated by appellants Rankin, Craven, Hensley and Harris. 37 It seems clear that an enterprise engaged in or affecting interstate commerce becomes subject to the criminal sanctions of Title IX when, and only when, it is conducted through a pattern of racketeering activity. In still another and longer section of the definition portion of the statute, Congress defined the specific crimes which are encompassed in the term racketeering activity. 5 38 Appellants were charged, as we have noted above, with an activity and offenses which violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(c) and (d). These two sections provide: 39 (c) It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise's affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt. 40 (d) It shall be unlawful for any person to conspire to violate any of the provisions of subsections (a), (b), or (c) of this section. 41 18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(c), (d) (1976). 42 The elements of the crime charged in (c) are: 1) engaging in an enterprise, 2) affecting interstate commerce, 3) conducted through a pattern of racketeering, and 4) involving two or more statutorily-named racketeering crimes. 43 It requires some imagination to believe that any one of these appellants was in any doubt about the illegality of buying, possessing and selling narcotics; buying, possessing and selling stolen property which had moved in interstate commerce; and buying, possessing and selling stolen guns which had moved in interstate commerce. It is, of course, certainly possible that they were not familiar with the augmented penalties provided by the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, but its passage has been the subject of far more public notice than the great majority of criminal statutes adopted by the federal government, and the statute had been fully effective since October 15, 1970. 44 To summarize this review of the critical statutory language, we point out that an interpretation of the statute which would restrict the use of the term enterprise to ostensibly legitimate enterprises would commit the following errors of construction. First, it would read out of the statute the statute's own definition of enterprise which includes group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity. Second, it would read out of the statute the meaning of the words any enterprise, as used in the statute. And third, it would read into the statute without any justification therefor the vague phrase ostensibly legitimate as a modifier for the word enterprise which Congress had seen fit to employ alone. 45 We do not believe that there is any ambiguity to be found in the use of the word enterprise in 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961 and 1962. As a consequence, we see no occasion for employment of the well known canon stated in Rewis v. United States, 401 U.S. 808, 812, 91 S.Ct. 1056, 1059, 28 L.Ed.2d 493 (1971), that ambiguity concerning the ambit of criminal statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity. This is particularly emphasized by the fact that Congress provided specifically that Title IX (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), Be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes. Pub.L.No. 91-452, Title IX § 904(a), 84 Stat. 947 (1970). 46 Nor do we believe that there is any conflict, overlapping, or ambiguity created by the statute's employment of the terms enterprise and pattern of racketeering activity. Congress itself defined both of these terms in simple and understandable language: 47 (4) enterprise includes any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity; 48 (5) pattern of racketeering activity requires at least two acts of racketeering activity, one of which occurred after the effective date of this chapter and the last of which occurred within ten years (excluding any period of imprisonment) after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity; .... 49 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961(4), (5) (1976). 50 Enterprise in the context of this case clearly refers to the organization in which these nine defendants (and others) joined to conduct the organization's affairs. 51 Pattern of racketeering activity refers to the various criminal activities (named by statute) engaged in by the enterprise. 52