COURT ORDERS RESTUDY OF CONVICTION OF ALLEGED STREET GANG LEADER

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for
prosecutors to win convictions in federal cases alleging a continuing
illegal-drug enterprise.

Juries in such cases must agree which specific illegal acts were
committed by a defendant, the court ruled 6-3 in ordering restudy of
the conviction of the alleged leader of a Chicago street gang.

It is not enough for jurors to agree more generally that a defendant
committed a series of violations without specifying which ones, the
court said.

Writing for the court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted that the law
has 90 sections describing various acts that could be considered violations.

The breadth of the law makes it more likely that allowing jurors to
reach a verdict without agreeing on specific violations "will cover up
wide disagreement among the jurors about just what the defendant did,
or did not, do," Breyer wrote.

Unless jurors are required to focus on specific details, Breyer said,
they may "fail to do so, simply concluding from testimony, say, of bad
reputation, that where there is smoke there must be fire."

Today's decision set aside a lower court ruling that affirmed Eddie
Richardson's conviction and life sentence. Prosecutors say that in
1970 Richardson formed a street gang on Chicago's west side called the
Undertaker Vice Lords, and that his title was King of all the
Undertakers.

He was charged in 1994 with conspiracy to sell narcotics, including
heroin and crack cocaine, and with engaging in a continuing narcotics
criminal enterprise.

The drug-enterprise law requires proof that a defendant committed a
federal felony drug violation that was part of a "continuing series of
violations" involving five or more other people supervised by the defendant.

Prosecutors said the Chicago scheme involved thousands of drug
sales.

The trial judge told jurors that to convict Richardson, they had to
unanimously agree that he committed at least three federal narcotics
violations, but they did not need to agree on which specific offenses
he committed.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the trial judge's
ruling and upheld Richardson's conviction.

In appealing to the Supreme Court, Richardson's lawyers relied on a
1970 Supreme Court decision that said prosecutors must prove every
element of a crime. The series of violations were an element of the
crime and therefore jurors must unanimously agree on each specific
violation, his lawyers said.

The Clinton administration argued instead that the criminal enterprise
law focused on a course of conduct, not the identity of any particular
offense. Requiring jury agreement on which specific offenses someone
committed could lead to defendants being acquitted even though jurors
agreed that they committed a series of offenses, government lawyers
said.

The Supreme Court ruled against the government, and ordered lower
courts to consider analyzing whether the error should be considered
harmless in Richardson's case.

Breyer's opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and
Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter and
Clarence Thomas.

Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg dissented.

Writing for the three, Kennedy called the ruling a "substantial
departure from what Congress intended," adding that it "rewards those
drug kingpins whose operations are so vast that the individual
violations cannot be recalled or charged with specificity."

The case is Richardson vs. U.S., 97-8629.