United States v. John Roselli, United States of America v. Maurice Friedman, United States of America v. Benjamin Teitelbaum, United States of America v. Manuel Jacobs

432 F.2d 879
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedOctober 30, 1970
Docket24300_1
StatusPublished

This text of 432 F.2d 879 (United States v. John Roselli, United States of America v. Maurice Friedman, United States of America v. Benjamin Teitelbaum, United States of America v. Manuel Jacobs) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. John Roselli, United States of America v. Maurice Friedman, United States of America v. Benjamin Teitelbaum, United States of America v. Manuel Jacobs, 432 F.2d 879 (9th Cir. 1970).

Opinion

432 F.2d 879

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
John ROSELLI, Defendant-Appellant.
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Maurice FRIEDMAN, Defendant-Appellant.
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Benjamin TEITELBAUM, Defendant-Appellant.
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Manuel JACOBS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 24220.

No. 24289.

No. 24290.

No. 24300.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

September 28, 1970.

Rehearings Denied October 30, 1970.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED Thomas A. Wadden, Jr. (argued), Washington, D. C., James P. Cantillon, Cantillon & Cantillon, Beverly Hills, Cal., for John Roselli.

Herman F. Selvin, Beverly Hills, Cal. (argued), Grant B. Cooper, Los Angeles, Cal., and Norman Oberstein, Kaplan, Livingston, Goodwin, Berkowitz & Selvin, Beverly Hills, Cal., for Maurice Friedman.

Clarence S. Hunt (argued), Joseph A. Ball, Douglas Dalton, Michael F. Richman, Ball, Hunt, Hart & Brown, Long Beach, Cal., for Benjamin Teitelbaum.

William Marshall Morgan (argued), Morgan, Wenzel, Lynberg, Stearns & Morris, Los Angeles, Cal., for Manuel Jacobs.

Gerald F. Uelmen (argued), and James E. Shekoyan, Asst. U. S. Attys., Robert L. Meyer, U. S. Atty., David R. Nissen, Chief, Special Prosecution Division, Los Angeles, Cal., for appellee.

Before BROWNING, DUNIWAY and HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judges.

BROWNING, Circuit Judge:

Appellants participated in an organized scheme to cheat for profit in card games played at the Friars Club, a private social club in Beverly Hills, California. Victims were induced to join high stake gin rummy games. Observers stationed at ceiling peekholes transmitted playing instructions to confederates in the game via electronic signaling devices.

The activity continued from the summer of 1962 to the summer of 1966. Games were "peeked" almost daily during a portion of this period. Appellants and other participants in the scheme made large profits. George Seach, an unindicted coconspirator who acted as "peekman" from late June 1962 to early April 1963, estimated the "take" during this period at $400,000.

After a long and complex trial appellants were convicted of conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. § 1952 (interstate travel and use of interstate facilities in aid of racketeering enterprises) and § 2314 (interstate transportation of fraudulently taken securities), and substantive violations of these sections1 and of 26 U.S. C. § 7206 (false statements in income tax returns).

* Appellants' threshold contention that their conduct did not come within the terms of 18 U.S.C. § 1952, raises two issues regarding the meaning of the statute.

Section 1952 condemns interstate travel or the use of interstate facilities in furtherance of "any unlawful activity," defined as including "any business enterprise involving gambling, liquor on which the federal excise tax has not been paid, narcotics, or prostitution offenses in violation of the laws of the State in which they are committed or of the United States." The Government's theory is that appellants' conduct was a "business enterprise" within the meaning of the statute because it was a continuous course of conduct pursued for profit; and that it involved "gambling * * * offenses" in violation of California Penal Code section 332.2

Appellants' first argument is that section 1952 was intended to reach only forms of gambling that were within the province of organized crime at the time the statute was enacted, numbers, bookmaking, and dice, for example; and that gin rummy does not fall in this category.

It is true that section 1952 was aimed at organized crime.3 It is also true that Congress intended to strike at those illicit activities that provide organized crime with its profits, particularly gambling.4 To accomplish this purpose, however, Congress did not choose to direct the prohibitions of section 1952 against only those persons who could be shown to be members of an organized criminal group (this much appellants concede),5 nor against only those kinds of gambling, liquor, narcotics, and prostitution offenses that racketeers were engaged in at the time Congress acted. The words of section 1952 are general; they contain no restriction to particular persons or to particular kinds of gambling, liquor, narcotics, and prostitution offenses.6

The reasons seem self-evident. It would usually be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that an individual or business was associated with or controlled by a clandestine criminal organization. It might also be difficult to prove that a particular offense was of the kind commonly engaged in by organized criminals in 1961; and, in any event, such a restriction upon the statute's coverage would provide an easy avenue for evasion through adoption of new forms and techniques of illicit trafficking. Nothing in the legislative history suggests that Congress intended prosecutors and courts to read into the Act such highly restrictive and administratively impractical exclusionary provisions. On the contrary, as we read the legislative record, Congress meant exactly what the language of section 1952 states — it deliberately chose to make the statute applicable generally, and without crippling restrictions, to any person engaged in any kind of illicit business enterprise in one of the four fields of activity specified in the statute, which experience showed to be those in which organized racketeers commonly engaged.7

Appellants contend that the "business enterprise" requirement was included in section 1952 for the very purpose of limiting the statute as they suggest. Concededly the purpose of the "business enterprise" restriction, like that limiting the statute to illicit activity in one of the four fields in which racketeers were commonly engaged, was to focus the statute upon organized crime. Again, however, the technique Congress employed was that of stating the limitation in general terms applicable to organized crime but not confined to it. Thus Congress limited section 1952 to any "business enterprise" because the requirement of a continuous course of conduct for profit would ordinarily include the gambling operations of organized crime;8 but, as we have said, there is nothing to suggest that Congress intended to go beyond the conditions expressed in the statute and require either that the "business enterprise" be operated by racketeers or that it be of a specific kind in which racketeers very commonly engaged at the time the statute was enacted.

Appellants rely heavily upon "interpretive technique" applied to the Anti-Racketeering Act of 1934 (18 U.S. C. § 420(a)) in United States v.

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432 F.2d 879, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-john-roselli-united-states-of-america-v-maurice-ca9-1970.