Birds of a Feather Rico: Trying Partners In Crime Together

This Article examines how RICO\u27s substantive elements, namely enterprise, pattern, and racketeering activity, shift the balance of power in a criminal prosecution by altering the application of procedural and evidentiary rules. Part I reviews the relevant procedural and evidentiary rules, as they existed before RICO and the advent of the enterprise trial. Part II introduces RICO and examines how it changed the application of these rules, with particular focus on the law of joinder of offenses and offenders. Part III examines the law of joinder and severance in the U .K. where the primary paradigm for a trial is a lone defendant answering for a single offence. Part IV uses the recent U.K. ricin trial as a case study, demonstrating the need for a substantive offense to tie together loose-knit conspiracies and more effectively prosecute enterprise criminality like organized crime and terrorism. Finally, this Article concludes that RICO is successful partly because its substantive elements, namely pattern, enterprise, and racketeering activity interact with the procedural law to facilitate joinder of offenses and offenders. This Article suggests that our common law neighbors have missed an opportunity by failing to modify the structure of trials as part of the comprehensive criminal reform program