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.