Court Opinion

ID: 9499769
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:57:16.538709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:42.981840
License: Public Domain

WOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Fifteen years and twelve years ago respectively, James Marcello and Frank Ca-labrese, Sr., were indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d), for conspiring to engage in a pattern of racketeering activity through an enterprise. The enterprise in question for Marcello was the “Carlisi Street Crew,” which was specifically alleged to be “part of a larger criminal organization known as ‘the mob’ or ‘the Outfit.’ ” Paragraph 4 of the indictment charged that “the ‘boss’ of the Crew was ultimately responsible to the head of the Outfit and was required to ensure that the leadership of the Outfit received a share of the proceeds from the Crew’s activities.” Paragraph 5(b) went on to allege that Marcello served as a go-between for Samuel Carlisi, the head of the Crew, and representatives of other Chicago “Outfit” street crews. In short, the 1992 indictment made it clear that the criminal organization with which Marcello was associated was part and parcel of the Chicago Outfit. The same picture emerges from the 1995 indictment against Cala-brese. It, too, asserts in paragraph 1 that “[t]he Calabrese Street Crew was part of a larger criminal organization known to the public as ‘the Mob,’ and to its members and associates as ‘The Outfit.’ ” Frank Calabrese, Sr., according to paragraph 3(a) of the indictment, “resolved disputes both within the Calabrese Street Crew and between that crew and other organized crime street crews,” and he “represented the Calabrese Street Crew in meetings with members of other organized crime crews.”
In the indictment now before us, both Marcello and Calabrese have been charged once again with participating in a RICO conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d). This time, the alleged “enterprise” is the Outfit itself, rather than any of its constituent parts. There is also a temporal difference between the Second Superseding Indictment before us, which was returned by the Special August 2003-2 Grand Jury on June 2, 2005, and the *582earlier two indictments. It covers more than forty years, “[f]rom approximately the middle of the 1960s through the date of the return of this indictment.” Marcello’s earlier indictment spanned the time period from approximately 1979 through “at least” May 1990, and Calabrese’s specified the period from 1978 through April of 1992. Finally, although (as the government concedes) some of the predicate acts supporting the RICO charge are the same as the ones alleged in the two men’s earlier indictments, the 2005 indictment asserts many more.
In the interest of a prompt decision in this case, I do not wish to belabor the points I am making here. In brief, however, I do agree with the majority in one significant respect. As they note, ante at 577-78, there can be no question of double jeopardy for acts that took place as part of the continuation of the conspiracy after the time periods covered by the earlier indictments. No matter what, therefore, these defendants are not entitled to avoid altogether the trial that is scheduled to begin soon. The more difficult question is whether the government is entitled to rely on predicate acts that were committed during the time periods for which Marcello and Calabrese have already stood trial and been convicted, whether or not those acts were identified earlier as support for the earlier RICO conspiracies. The defendants are correct to emphasize, in this connection, that they were found guilty (by jury and by plea) of conducting a RICO conspiracy, not of committing a series of discrete criminal acts. They freely concede that there would be no double jeopardy problem if the government wanted to indict them for the substantive crimes reflected in many of the predicate acts, such as murder, money laundering, or fraud.
The majority, by drawing analogies to corporate governance models and the law of copyright, is satisfied that the conspiracy in the present case is not quite the same as the conspiracy charged in the earlier cases. It is willing to give the defendants half a loaf with respect to them double jeopardy defense, by inviting them to renew this motion after trial if it turns out that they have been convicted on the basis of evidence that has been recycled from the earlier trials. But, as the majority rightly notes, the Fifth Amendment protects people from twice having to stand trial for a given offense. See Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 2034, 52 L.Ed.2d 651 (1977). It is not limited to an ex post vindication at the end of a trial.
Perhaps the majority’s analogies would be apt, if it were clear that the focus earlier had been exclusively on actions taken respectively by the Carlisi Street Crew and the Calabrese Street Crew. But the earlier indictments show that the charges encompassed the role that the two crews were playing in the larger Chicago Outfit — precisely the enterprise that is alleged in this new case. In United States v. DeCologero, 364 F.3d 12, 17-18 (1st Cir.2004), the court explicitly refused to conclude that enterprises resembling those charged in this case were distinct:
The present indictment charges the defendants with participating in a nominally different enterprise — the “DeCologe-ro Crew” — said by the government to be “a separate entity from the Patriarca La Cosa Nostra (‘LCN’) Family, yet ... structured in a similar manner to a crew or regime of La Cosa Nostra” and “aligned with” the Carrozza faction of the Patriarca Family. According to the charge, the DeCologero Crew’s aim was “controlling, supervising, and financing illegal activities,” including generating money through robbery and drug sales “for the personal use of members ... and to build up a war chest of firearms, *583weapons, and ammunition which was to be used, in part, to support the” Carroz-za faction.
If the double jeopardy problem turned solely on whether the two cases involved the same enterprise, we would be faced with a hard question. The RICO statute loosely defines an “enterprise” to include not only any legal entity (e.g., a corporation) but also “any union or group of individuals associated in fact.” 18 U.S.C. § 1961(4). Although the De-Cologero indictment alleges that the Carrozza faction and DeCologero crew were separate enterprises, the proffered evidence could support the view that both were part of a vertically organized endeavor, with DeCologero somewhere in the middle of the organizational pyramid.
Past cases have stressed that conspiracies cannot be artificially broken up for the purpose of bringing separate cases, see Braverman v. United States, 317 U.S. 49, 53, 63 S.Ct. 99, 87 L.Ed. 23 (1942), and there is no reason why the rule should be any different for RICO enterprises. But whether there was one enterprise or two need not be resolved. Every circuit to have examined the issue has agreed that double jeopardy only bars successive RICO charges involving both the same enterprise and the same pattern of racketeering activity. In our view the current RICO charges do involve a different pattern than the old.
Id. See also United States v. Ciancaglini, 858 F.2d 923, 929 (3d Cir.1988) (“Because of the overlap, however, we are unable to conclude that this was not the same ‘enterprise.’ Both indictments involved Philadelphia-based crime families, and both alleged enterprises with the same goal.”). The DeCologero court thus ultimately found no double jeopardy problem, but only because “all of the [racketeering acts] in the present indictment are different from those charged in the [previous] case.” Id. at 19 (emphasis in original).
The majority and the government also cite United States v. Langella, 804 F.2d 185, 189 (2d Cir.1986), but that case is easily distinguished. Although the court held that “the Colombo Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra” and “the Commission of La Cosa Nostra” were two different enterprises, it carefully explained that “the Commission” is an independent entity with a separate purpose from an individual family of La Cosa Nostra, such as the Colombo family. Id. As Langella recognized, “The indictment alleged that the Commission was a council of leaders of various organized crime families, ‘an enterprise distinct from the individual Families,’ established with the special purposes of, inter alia, resolving disputes among families and carrying out ‘joint ventures’ involving more than one family.” Id. at 187. Indeed, the court signaled that it might feel differently about a case like ours:
Although the Commission and the Colombo Family, in a sense, are vertically organized segments of an intricate, organized crime structure, the allegations of the two indictments sufficiently demonstrate that they are two separate and independent criminal enterprises. Significantly, the Colombo Family is not merely a lower level of authority within the hierarchy of organized crime: Within its own sphere of operation, the Colombo Family is a self-sufficient enterprise that functions without oversight by the Commission.
Id. at 189 (emphasis added). The patterns of racketeering charged also distinguish Langella from our case. The Langella court began its comparison of the nature and scope of the racketeering charged in the two indictments by stating, “Here, there is absolutely no overlap of any kind *584between the patterns of racketeering activity alleged in the two indictments.” Id. (emphasis added). No one asserts that the same is true here. As the government candidly conceded at oral argument, “There will be some overlapping proofs with respect to what was covered in the first case ...”
This court has already held, in United States v. Thornton, 972 F.2d 764 (7th Cir.1992), that the government may not bring one narrow charge first and then later bring a broader charge that entirely encompasses the first one:
The government has taken great pains to emphasize that the conspiracy alleged in the Pennsylvania indictment lasted only a few months, involved many fewer people, and was therefore much smaller in scope than the conspiracy alleged in the Illinois indictment, which involved some forty plus coconspirators, trafficking to numerous states, and encompassed a seven-to-nine-year time frame. Moreover, the government emphasized in the hearing before the district judge that the agent involved in the [narrower] Pennsylvania indictment knew nothing about the activities alleged in the [broader] Illinois indictment. It appears that in making such arguments the government is implying that even assuming that the Pennsylvania indictment charged the same conspiracy as the Illinois indictment, there is no double jeopardy problem because the first-charged conspiracy was only a small subset of the later-charged conspiracy and because the government did not know that this was one conspiracy. We must remember, however, the double jeopardy clause imposes limits on a defendant’s criminal exposure. In order to stay true to these finality requirements, the government cannot reprosecute a defendant for the same offense whenever it obtains broader evidence of criminal culpability.
Id. at 765. In my opinion, that is what the government is trying to do here, insofar as the charges cover the same time periods as those in the earlier indictments. That is why the majority’s bank robbery analogy is inapposite. In that example, the government can certainly bring two separate charges against the driver. But that is because the driver’s single act aided the commission of two separate crimes: the robbery of Bank 1 and the robbery of Bank 2. That analogy assumes the answer to the question before us: whether the government is now charging these defendants with new crimes for which they never stood trial, in which some of the evidence that supported their earlier conviction also underlies the new charges. My response is that we do not have two distinct crimes analogous to the two bank robberies. Instead, the indictments from the previous cases are entirely subsumed within the new indictment. The fact that the new indictment also lists additional predicate acts does not change the fact that the defendants are currently exposed to criminal liability for crimes for which they have already served their punishments. We have already noted that “[deciphering what constitutes prosecution for the same offense for purposes of double jeopardy is ... even more difficult when we move from single layered crimes such as bank robberies to prosecution for multilayered crimes such as conspiracies which expand over time and place. The reason for the added complexity is that it is difficult to apply double jeopardy’s notions of finality to crimes which have no easily discernable boundaries with regard to time, place, persons, and objectives.” Thornton, 972 F.2d at 765 (citations omitted). Not a single case that has considered the double jeopardy issue in the RICO conspiracy context involving organized crime families *585has permitted an indictment that encompasses such a substantial portion of a pri- or one.
As the Supreme Court put it in United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 101 S.Ct. 2524, 69 L.Ed.2d 246 (1981), a RICO “enterprise” is an entity made up of “a group of persons associated together for a common purpose of engaging in a course of conduct.” Id. at 583, 101 S.Ct. 2524. A “pattern of racketeering activity” is “a series of criminal acts as defined by the statute.” Id. Comparing the 2005 indictment with its 1992 and 1995 forebears, I conclude that the government is pursuing the same enterprise now as it did before. It has merely found broader evidence of criminal culpability and has added to the list of criminal predicate acts. The language of the 2005 indictment says as much, where it charges that “[t]he criminal activities of the Chicago Outfit were carried out in part by sub-groups, or ‘crews,’ which were generally given territories in different locations in the Chicago area.” See also United States v. DiDomenico, 78 F.3d 294, 297-298 (7th Cir.1996) (“The Chicago Outfit (the ‘Outfit,’ the ‘Mob,’ the ‘Mafia’) — the criminal enterprise whose most notorious boss was A1 Capone — operates through ‘street crews.’ ”); id. at 302 (noting, in a case charging twenty members of the “Ferriola Street Crew,” and in which the indictment defined the enterprise as “The Joseph Ferriola Street Crew,” that the district court was entitled to empanel an anonymous jury because “[t]his is not a case ... in which the defendants are rumored to have ‘Mob’ connections. The defendants are the ‘Mob.’ ” (emphasis in original)). The indictment before us goes so far as to name both the Carlisi and the Calabrese Street Crews as subgroups of the Outfit. Borrowing from the majority’s analysis, the structures of the enterprises charged in the earlier indictments are more closely analogous to a branch office or division of one company than they are to a distinct subsidiary.
While the new indictment alleges more predicate acts than the earlier ones, the overlaps are considerable. (Thus, we cannot say, as the DeCologero and Langella courts did, that “all of the [racketeering acts] in the present indictment are different from those charged in the [previous] case,” 364 F.3d at 19 (emphasis in original), or “there is absolutely no overlap of any kind between the patterns of racketeering activity alleged in the two indictments,” 804 F.2d at 189.) As I noted earlier, many of the predicate acts charged in the 2005 indictment are identical to those in the earlier indictments. Moreover, if one were to look at the various “factors” identified in United States v. Marren, 890 F.2d 924 (7th Cir.1989), on which the government is content to rely, it is hard to resist the conclusion that these cases are about the same pattern of conduct. Those factors are “(1) the time of the various activities charged as separate patterns of racketeering; (2) the identity of the persons involved in the activities under each charge; (3) the statutory offenses charged as racketeering activities in each charge; (4) the nature and scope of the activity the government seeks to punish under each charge; and (5) the places where the corrupt activity took place under each charge.” Id. at 935. In the end, we must decide whether the area of overlap is so substantial that the two cases must be regarded as functionally the same. United States v. Sertich, 95 F.3d 520, 524 (7th Cir.1996). With respect to the period of time covered by the earlier indictments, the identity of the predicate acts is, in my view, easily great enough that we must find for the defendants on this part of the case too.
Although I would deny the defendants’ request for outright dismissal of this in*586dictment, I would grant their alternative petition for an order striking all of the averments in Count One that relate to the prior RICO conspiracy charges — that is, for Marcello the conspiracy that lasted from 1979 to 1990, and for Calabrese the conspiracy that went from 1978 to 1992. To that extent, I therefore dissent from the majority’s judgment.