Word: rico
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...RICO gives law enforcers extraordinary latitude because it focuses on patterns of criminal behavior rather than on individual crimes. It can target anyone involved in an "enterprise" that engages at least twice a decade in any of a broad range of criminal activities, from murder and extortion to mail and wire fraud. The law authorizes heavy prison sentences and carries a powerful economic punch. Convicted defendants must forfeit all their ill- gotten gains, including all "proceeds" from the enterprise...
Such punishments can sometimes be draconian. Gas-pump owner Oscar Porcelli, for example, faces the prospect of losing his string of New York gas stations for a RICO conviction stemming from sales-tax evasion. "He made a mistake, but not a mistake that should warrant shooting him with a cannon," says his attorney, Vivian Shevitz...
...economic penalties of the law can squeeze some defendants into plea- bargain agreements. Threatened by a RICO indictment and its sweeping forfeitures, the investment-banking firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert pleaded guilty to lesser charges last year and was hit with $650 million in penalties. Equally troubling to RICO targets is the law's ability to seize temporarily the assets of an accused before a trial begins -- even funds that would be used to pay a defense attorney. "Suddenly, there are a lot of born-again civil libertarians on Wall Street," says Michael Waldman, legislative director for Public Citizen Congress...
Although civil RICO lawsuits total less than half of a percent of the federal civil caseload, the statute's civil provisions draw some of the heaviest fire. "The imaginations of prosecutors in drafting RICO indictments are at least restrained by the Justice Department," explains University of Texas law professor Michael Tigar, "but the imaginations of plaintiffs' lawyers are not similarly restrained." What encourages the creativity, says critics, is the possibility of obtaining treble damages and the enormous leverage of labeling an opponent a "racketeer." The result has been a widening array of civil RICO lawsuits, from common commercial litigation...
This June, for the second time in four years, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to narrow the sweep of civil RICO, preferring to leave the matter to Congress. Not surprisingly, that ruling recharged ongoing legislative efforts to reform RICO's civil provisions. Among the broad coalition pressing for changes are some of the very groups that have recently attracted the attention of prosecutors: accountants and securities and commodities dealers. Says Waldman: "It's a combination of The Untouchables and Showdown at Gucci Gulch." The congressional shoot-out to determine what happens to RICO could come this fall...