[bratch]

Just got through reading Sonny Barger's book again and he had a chapter about his fight with the federal Rico act. I'm a little young to remember it and his view is a little biased. So what's your take on it? Is it still on the books/being used?

[DMF]

RICO is still being used, and yes Barger has a heavy bias.

Barger is an organized crime thug, and no amount of teddy bears tied to the handle bars will ever change that simple fact.

[Third_Rail]

Enlighten the people who don't know what the RICO Act is, please! :)

[bratch]

RICO- Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. Passed by Congress in 1970 as part of the Organized Crime Control Act.

[DMF]

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It gave the federal government the ability to go after people that actually ran organized crime rather than just the street level thugs.

Guys like Sonny Barger don't like it because without RICO it's harder to go after them if they just order the murders, the drug deals, etc, then collect the dirty money, rather than go out and get the blood and phosphorous on their hands. Barger is upset because RICO makes it harder for him to run his biker MAFIA.

For more information you can read the actual statute here: http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_96.html

[kayak bum]

It is being used quite effectively on a group of corrupt politicians in my area.

[Standing Wolf]

...both criminal and civil RICO have been used in a number of other ways. While a complete list is impossible here, RICO defendants include...

Why am I not the least bit surprised?

[Brett Bellmore]

If I recall correctly, the one notable exception to the expansive reach of RICO has been, rather strangely, labor unions. There's actually a Supreme court ruling that bars the use of RICO to prosecute violence by labor unions, so long as the violence is aimed at furthering a legitmate union objective. Unions thus becoming the only private sector organization that can legally conspire to commit crimes of violence.

Now, THAT is what I call having the courts on your side! :banghead:

[publius]

So if Congress passed this criminal law, that must mean that the authority to pass it can be found in article 1, section 8 of the Constitution. Hmmm...scanning....scanning....nope. I don't see it. I must have missed it. Where could it be?

Let me guess (http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=110380)...

Oh well. What's a little word twisting when there are abortion protesters who need some federal attention?

[deej]

Any time two people get together in a room and do something the feds don't like, they are likely to run afoul of RICO.

Fed persecution of tobacco companies is the big RICO news nowadays.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/05/national/05tobacco.html

[carebear]

RICO is one of those pragmatic bad laws that arguably have a purpose but also have the potential, absent strict scrutiny from the courts, of being used far outside their intended purview.

It's a catch-22. It really comes in handy for prosecuting the real bad guys who can read the predicates of particular separate crimes as well as the cops can, but if you get the wrong DA or judge involved... :uhoh:

Tighten it up too much and the baddies just work around it. :banghead:

[publius]

In 1997 (http://reason.com/9711/ci.js.gang.shtml), RICO was being stretched to cover federal gun crimes.

In 1998 (http://reason.com/sullum/050698.shtml), abortion activists were attacked using RICO.

The triple damages and the fact that an accusation is enough to trigger asset forfeiture make RICO just loads of fun. Take a couple of rather ordinary crimes, add on the crime of being a criminal, and suddenly the rules change. Very convenient. A derivative crime (http://www.reason.com/0404/fe.wa.washingtons.shtml).

That, along with the fact that the commerce clause should establish a free trade area, not a federal regulatory area, makes RICO an inherently abusive law, IMO. But then, I'm probably a racketeering gangster under some combination of unconstitutional federal laws.