Rico Carty was my favorite Atlanta Brave when I was a kid, along with Hank Aaron. Carty was among the first Dominicans to play in MLB and was part of the Atlanta Braves team that won its first National DivisionWestern League title in 1969.No, not that Rico.
Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, south of Cuba, the Bahamas, and the Cayman Islands, known for banking, tourism, and rum.
Not that Rico either. RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act)is a federal law on the books since 1970, intended for targeting organized criminal activity and racketeering, giving federal prosecutors, the FBI, and other federal agencies a new tool to go after the Mafia and drug cartels. Numerous states, including Georgia, have followed with their own RICO statutes.
RICO laws allow prosecutors to pursue charges against multiple parties for separate crimes connected to a common goal, crime, or conspiracy. Though initially passed to target organized crime, gangs, and drug cartels, the law has become a much more broadly used prosecutorial tool.
Felony RICO convictions typically carry prison sentences of 5-20 years in prison for each count. Under Georgia law, only the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, a five-member gubernatorially appointed panel with staggered terms, may grant pardons, paroles, reprieves, or sentencing commutations. Georgia’s governor nor even the president of the United States has this pardoning power.
It was a RICO case that brought pleas and prison time for Atlanta Public Schools senior administrators and principals during trials in 2014-2015, around a tangled web of adjusting student test scores on standardized tests during 2009 and prior.
A GBI investigation determined that cheating and altering scores had occurred in 44 of 56 APS schools.
A total of 178 educators and administrators were implicated in correcting answers to change test scores, among those, 35 were indicted, all but 12 took plea deals and the remaining 12 went to trial.
That trial would become the longest criminal trial in Georgia history, lasting eight months. Before the end of the trial, Beverly Hall, the APS superintendent at the center of the scandal, died of breast cancer at age 68. And in another RICO coincidence, the lead prosecutor of those proceedings was Fani Willis, now the district attorney in Fulton County. On April 1, 2015, 11 of the 12 co-defendants were convicted on racketeering charges under the Georgia RICO Act.
Only Ms.Dessa Curb, one of the accused teachers, was found not guilty on all charges.
Former President Donald J. Trump is facing multiple simultaneous legal proceedings. This RICO case in Georgia is perhaps his biggest challenge.
It includes 18 co-defendants, with four of those co-defendants already entering guilty pleas to lesser charges and committing to cooperate and testify honestly for the prosecution.
Those entering pleas to date are Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell(all attorneys), and Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman related to an election systems data breach in Coffee County.
Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been quietly meeting with prosecutors since his attempt to move this case to federal court jurisdiction failed.
Former Georgia attorney Lin Wood, who has since surrendered his license to practice law and was the road-show partner of Sidney “The Kraken” Powell for weeks after the November 2020 General Election, also appears on internal lists of witnesses for the prosecution.
The 41-count indictment in the Trump case cites 161 actions by the former president and his colleagues, and these come from three main sub-plots identified within the RICO indictment: 1. Coffee County election equipment and data breach (Hall and Powell); 2.
Alternate GOP Trump Electors slate (Chesebro); and.Knowingly false statements made publicly regarding Georgia elections (Ellis). Those pleading guilty are among the former president’s key advisors amid numerous “Stop the Steal” initiatives and legal filings.
As reported by The AJC, “The law says you only need one witness to establish a fact. But, having more than one demonstrates consistency, which always improves credibility, and could be more persuasive to a jury,” said former DeKalb County District Attorney and later EPA Administrator, Gwen Keyes Fleming.
So, what is a RICO? For President Donald J. Trump it is looking increasingly like the law and legal term which may become the antonym of Teflon, for the longtime Teflon Don.