Pubdate: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 Source: Associated Press Copyright: 1999 Associated Press Author: Laurie Asseo COURT: JURIES MUST CITE VIOLATIONS WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court today made it harder for prosecutors to win convictions in federal cases alleging a continuing illegal-drug enterprise. Juries in such cases must agree which specific illegal acts were committed by a defendant, the court ruled 6-3 in ordering restudy of the conviction of the alleged leader of a Chicago street gang. It is not enough for jurors to agree more generally that a defendant committed a series of violations without specifying which ones, the court said. Writing for the court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted that the law has 90 sections describing various acts that could be considered violations. The breadth of the law makes it more likely that allowing jurors to reach a verdict without agreeing on specific violations "will cover up wide disagreement among the jurors about just what the defendant did, or did not, do," Breyer wrote. Unless jurors are required to focus on specific details, Breyer said, they may "fail to do so, simply concluding from testimony, say, of bad reputation, that where there is smoke there must be fire." Today's decision set aside a lower court ruling that affirmed Eddie Richardson's conviction and life sentence. Prosecutors say that in 1970 Richardson formed a street gang on Chicago's west side called the Undertaker Vice Lords, and that his title was King of all the Undertakers. He was charged in 1994 with conspiracy to sell narcotics, including heroin and crack cocaine, and with engaging in a continuing narcotics criminal enterprise. The drug-enterprise law requires proof that a defendant committed a federal felony drug violation that was part of a "continuing series of violations" involving five or more other people supervised by the defendant. Prosecutors said the Chicago scheme involved thousands of drug sales. The trial judge told jurors that to convict Richardson, they had to unanimously agree that he committed at least three federal narcotics violations, but they did not need to agree on which specific offenses he committed. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the trial judge's ruling and upheld Richardson's conviction. In appealing to the Supreme Court, Richardson's lawyers relied on a 1970 Supreme Court decision that said prosecutors must prove every element of a crime. The series of violations were an element of the crime and therefore jurors must unanimously agree on each specific violation, his lawyers said. The Clinton administration argued instead that the criminal enterprise law focused on a course of conduct, not the identity of any particular offense. Requiring jury agreement on which specific offenses someone committed could lead to defendants being acquitted even though jurors agreed that they committed a series of offenses, government lawyers said. The Supreme Court ruled against the government, and ordered lower courts to consider analyzing whether the error should be considered harmless in Richardson's case. Breyer's opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter and Clarence Thomas. Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. Writing for the three, Kennedy called the ruling a "substantial departure from what Congress intended," adding that it "rewards those drug kingpins whose operations are so vast that the individual violations cannot be recalled or charged with specificity." The case is Richardson vs. U.S., 97-8629. - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry