From midway!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!hoptoad!gnu Thu Jul 19 00:45:27 CDT 1990 Article: 833 of alt.activism Xref: midway alt.activism:833 misc.legal:1415 Path: midway!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!hoptoad!gnu From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: alt.activism,misc.legal Subject: RICO Message-ID: <11550@hoptoad.uucp> Date: 11 Jul 90 23:04:07 GMT References: <1990Jul5.180441.2866@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> Organization: Cygnus Support, Palo Alto Lines: 49 tek@ms.uky.edu (Thomas E. Kunselman) wrote: > Why is RICO so terrible? From everything I've heard about RICO, > it sounds like the worst thing it does it make it easier for individuals > to fight injustices against them. The worst thing about RICO is that it allows a bunch of unrelated people, doing unrelated acts which are not in-and-of-themselves criminal, to be charged as a "criminal syndicate". In other words, you have no idea whether what you are doing is illegal, because if some prosecutor lumps you with ten other people who you don't even know, your "pattern of activities" might be illegal. The next worst thing about RICO is that it purports to gives authority to seize peoples' property BEFORE they are tried and convicted. Just the accusation is enough. This has frequently been used to bankrupt people so they can't pay lawyers to defend themselves. They don't even have the money to fight the seizure of their property -- Catch-22. It's a way to "get" somebody, regardless of whether they committed a crime. The House isn't planning to fix any of THESE parts of RICO. The things that the proposed House bill wants to "fix" about RICO are actually some of its better provisions. In particular, if you or any other citizen is harmed by a criminal act covered under RICO, you have the right to sue the criminals and bring them to court. The Congress wants to repeal this right, so that only US Attorneys (government bureaucrats) have the right to compel potential criminals to come to court. I know of a number of crimes which the government has no interest in prosecuting. A friend's email was taken in clear violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and a year of trying was not enough to get the FBI to even investigate the situation, let alone prosecute the criminals responsible. Of course, the criminals were other law enforcement agencies, so why would the FBI want to hassle them? The Christic Institute case is another good example. There's no way a serious Justice Dept. prosecution of the Iran-Contra affair is ever going to happen -- Washington is too lousy with CIA and other spooks who had their fingers in all the way to the armpits. RICO let individual citizens bring these people to trial, and that's why Congress wants to take that power away. How can you run a sleazy, corrupt government if the public has full recourse to the courts to uncover corruption? I'm no fan of RICO, but if it is to be amended, let's amend the bad parts and leave in the citizen access to courts. Please oppose HR 5111. -- John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com Drug laws = drug lies. Just say "know".