Pubdate: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 Source: Charlotte Observer (NC) Copyright: 1999 The Charlotte Observer Contact: http://www.charlotte.com/observer/ Author: Linda Greenhouse(NY Times) JUSTICES TOUGHEN TRIAL RULES UNDER LAW USED IN DRUG CASES (WASHINGTON, DC)-- The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that in order to convict a drug kingpin of running a "continuing criminal enterprise," jurors must unanimously agree that the defendant committed each of a series of individual drug offenses. The 6-to-3 decision placed a new burden on federal prosecutors to use precision in framing cases brought under one of the more powerful laws in the federal anti-drug arsenal. The 1970 law imposes a minimum 20-year sentence for engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, defined as a "continuing series of violations" of federal drug laws. The Justice Department, along with most of the federal appeals courts, took the view that a jury need only agree that the prosecution had proved a series of crimes, without the need for all jurors to vote to convict on the individual crimes that made up the series. In its ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court set aside the 1994 conviction of the leader of a Chicago drug gang, the Undertaker Vice Lords. The defendant, Eddie Richardson, who received a life sentence, was convicted of running a continuing criminal enterprise through repeated sales of cocaine and heroin from 1984 through 1991. The jurors had been instructed that they did not all have to agree on the specific crimes that comprised the series -- a total of at least three crimes, under the trial judge's instructions, although the statute itself does not specify a number. But they did have to agree that there had been a series of crimes. Under this view, the element of the offense that required a unanimous jury verdict was the series. Writing for the majority on Tuesday, Justice Stephen Breyer said that the individual offenses were themselves elements of the offense, at least three of which had to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a unanimous jury. In other matters, the Supreme Court on Tuesday: Let Kentucky prosecute two men on drug-trafficking charges after having required them to pay a tax on the drugs. The court turned away an appeal in which Joseph Nicholson and Robert Bird said their prosecutions, following payment of the drug tax, would unlawfully punish them twice. - --- MAP posted-by: manemez j lovitto