'RICO', the anti-Mafia law that is being used against former President Trump

2023-08-15 18:48:05, Kosova & Bota CNA

'RICO', the anti-Mafia law that is being used against former President

Fulton County District Attorney in the state of Georgia, Fannie Willis, began investigating Donald Trump, after the release of a January 2021 phone conversation between the former president and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Former President Trump called on the Secretary of State, a Republican politician and the state's top election official, to "find" the votes needed to overturn his Democratic rival Joe Biden's narrow victory.

More than two years later, the indictment handed up by a grand jury on Monday goes much further than the phone calls, alleging a whole network of crimes committed by Mr Trump and his allies.

Prosecutor Willis is using the state of Georgia's "Corrupt Organizations Under the Influence of Organized Crime" law, known as the 'RICO' law, to charge Trump and 18 other defendants on suspicion of participating in a broad conspiracy aimed at subverting the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state.

The prosecutor said the intention is to try all 19 defendants together and highlighted her office's prosecutors' experience with previous organized crime law cases, adding that this is the 11th case with charges based on the law. 'RICO', which has brought her office to court. Fani Willis became District Attorney in 2021.

Here's how this law works:

The federal RICO Act was enacted in 1970 as a means of combating organized crime. The law made it possible for prosecutors to go after mafia bosses and not just low-level criminals who did the dirty work.

'RICO', the anti-Mafia law that is being used against former President

But it was not intended to be used only for organized crime. In 1989, the Supreme Court, in an opinion, stated that "the law had a wide scope and could include a series of criminal offenses, of different forms, in which a wide range of offenders could be involved". Several years after the passage of the federal law, various states passed their own versions of the RICO law. In short, the RICO law allows prosecutors to charge a number of individuals who commit separate crimes but have the same common goal.

Georgia's RICO law was enacted in 1980 and criminalizes participating in, creating, or maintaining control of an "organization" through "a series of organized criminal activities," or conspiring to do so.

A criminal activity does not necessarily have to be successful in order to be prosecuted under the RICO Act.

The term "organization" can mean a single person, or a group of people, who have the same goal. "Organized crime" means committing, or intending to commit; soliciting, blackmailing, or threatening someone to commit one of the more than 30 crimes listed in the state's criminal code.

At least two criminal offenses must have been committed in order to meet the standard of "repeated organized criminal activity", or in other words, prosecutors must prove that an individual was involved in two or more criminal offences. as part of his activities in a criminal organization, to be tried under the RICO Act.

The Supreme Court, in its opinion on the federal "RICO" law, states that the charges must show continuity, that is, a series of criminal offenses have been committed over a long period of time, not just within a few weeks and months. But the Georgia Supreme Court has clarified that Georgia's RICO law contains no such time requirements.

Why the RICO Act

"I am a supporter of 'RICO'," said prosecutor Willis in August 2022, while announcing charges based on this law against more than 20 defendants as members of criminal gangs.

The prosecutor said jurors want to know all the facts surrounding an alleged crime, and RICO charges allow prosecutors to provide a complete picture of all illegal activity.

Pleading guilty to RICO charges carries severe penalties, which can be added to the penalties for lesser charges.

In Georgia, it carries prison terms of 5 to 20 years; a fine of $25,000, or three times the amount of the proceeds of the criminal activity, or both, imprisonment and a fine.

Challenges of using RICO law by the prosecution

Prosecutor J. Tom Morgan used the RICO Act to indict a corrupt sheriff in DeKalb County, adjacent to Fulton County. One of the challenges, he says, is explaining to the jury what RICO means and how it works.

"Everyone understands what an accusation of murder, rape, or theft means. But the term 'RICO' is not part of the everyday vocabulary," he says. "It is not an accusation that is seen in television series about crimes."

Prosecutor Willis' Experience with RICO

While a Deputy District Attorney in Fulton, she led the investigation and brought RICO charges against a group of public school teachers in a fraud scandal.

After a month-long trial, in April 2015, a jury found 11 former teachers guilty of organized crime for their role in a scheme to artificially inflate end-of-year standardized test scores. the state.

Since becoming chief district attorney in January 2021, she has filed several RICO charges against members of criminal gangs, including several popular rap singers.

Attorney John Floyd, a nationally recognized RICO legal expert based in Atlanta, Georgia, was one of Attorney Willis' assistants in the teachers' case. After opening the 2020 election investigation, she hired attorney Floyd as special counsel to help her in the event that her office files charges based on the 'RICO' law./ VOA