Court Opinion

ID: 9478627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:53:31.080956+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:31.599119
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring) (with whom Judge Feinberg joins):
I concur in Judge Kearse’s opinion and her analysis of RICO’s “pattern” requirement. I write separately because it is important to emphasize that Indelicato’s “pattern” of racketeering activity did not consist solely of the three murders at Joe & Mary’s Restaurant on July 12,1979. Proof of these murders was necessary but not sufficient to prove a RICO pattern of racketeering activity. This is a case where evidence concerning the nature of the RICO enterprise also served to prove the existence of a pattern of racketeering activity. Facts external to the predicate acts— the three murders — were essential to prove relatedness and the threat of continuity.
This was the quintessential racketeering case. The indictment, the proof, and the trial judge’s charge demonstrate that Indelicate was not an “independent contractor” called upon to commit an isolated crime. On the contrary, he was associated for some years with the ultimate criminal enterprise, the Commission of La Cosa Nos-tra. Indelicate committed murders which were critical to the enterprise’s achieving its goal of resolving Family leadership disputes; these were not “isolated acts of racketeering activity.” Sedima, S.P.R.L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479, 496 n. 14, 105 S.Ct. 3275, 3285 n. 14, 87 L.Ed.2d 346 (1985).
The indictment further charged that one of the purposes of the Commission enterprise was to “extend[] formal recognition to newly-elected Bosses of La Cosa Nostra Families, and [to] resolv[e] leadership disputes within a Family,” as well as to “keep[ ] persons inside and outside La Cosa Nostra in fear of the Commission by identifying the Commission with threats, violence, and murder.” Among the means used by the Commission to advance these general purposes was the resolution of “a leadership dispute within the Bonanno Family ... by authorizing the murders of Carmine Galante, a/k/a ‘Lilo,’ who was Boss of the Bonanno Family, and Leonard Coppola and Giuseppe Turano.” Thus, the indictment charged that there was an important connection between Indelicato’s conduct and the overall, common purposes of the racketeering enterprise. The murders were part of a larger plan, a reorganization or realignment of the Bonanno Family by the Commission.
The evidence was that in 1979, Indelicate was a formally inducted Soldier in the Bo-nanno Family, a Family that, because of its many factional disputes, was managed directly by the Commission. As a “made” member, Indelicate necessarily learned the Mafia rules set down by the Commission and took the oath to abide by those rules and to obey the Commission. Indelicate knew of the exclusively criminal purposes of the Commission and knew it had been engaging in, and that it would continue to engage in, racketeering activity.
Indelicate was chosen to carry out a murder plan so important that the Commission itself had the exclusive power to authorize it — namely, the assassination of the Boss of a La Cosa Nostra Family. Indelicato’s conspiracy with the Commission to murder the three involved planning which continued over a significant time period, beginning in June 1979, when the getaway car eventually used in the killing was stolen. There was evidence that a few days before July 12, Louis Giongetti — an associate of Indelicate — was instructed to collect a cache of shotguns and handguns and place them in the trunk of a car, and to return with them to a bar where Indelicate and another Mafioso were waiting. Indelicate was promoted to captain in the Bonanno Family as a reward for the killings.
*1386The district judge correctly instructed the jury on the elements of the RICO substantive offense. He used language specifically approved as embodying the “observations in footnote 14” of Sedima, United States v. Teitler, 802 F.2d 606, 612 (2d Cir.1986), when he described the “pattern” requirement for the jury:
Whether you are considering a pattern of loansharking, extortion, labor law violations or acts of murder, ... when you are considering whether they form a pattern as to any defendant, you must find that the defendant’s acts are not isolated or disconnected. You must find that they are related or connected by some common scheme, plan, or motive. Thus you must find that the acts constituted part of a larger pattern of activity that characterized the defendant’s participation in the affairs of the enterprise and you must consider and find whether or not there is a continuity plus relationship in the acts as to the defendant you are considering.
(Emphasis added.)
Thus, the jury was instructed that it could convict Indelicato only if it found his acts to be integrally related to the larger pattern of the enterprise’s activities, and not merely isolated or sporadic. The criminal nature of the enterprise involved in this case provides the continuity or threat of continuity necessary to establish a pattern. I believe that this is implicit in the majority opinion; accordingly, I concur.