Record
Court opinion
1997-12-02
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States
Salinas v. United States, 522 U.S. 52 (1997)
Supreme Court decision of December 2, 1997 holding that a defendant may be convicted of RICO conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. 1962(d) without himself committing or agreeing to commit the two predicate acts a substantive violation requires.
- Date
- 1997-12-02
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Source
- CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- 522 U.S. 52 (1997), No. 96-738
- Rights
- Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. CourtListener (Free Law Project) hosts the text; it is not the source institution.
Decided December 2, 1997; No. 96-738. Salinas, a deputy sheriff in Hidalgo County, Texas, was convicted of RICO conspiracy and federal bribery in a scheme with the sheriff to take bribes from a federal prisoner housed in the county jail. The decision resolved a conflict among the Courts of Appeals.
The Court held that a conspirator need not himself commit or agree to commit the two or more predicate acts required for a substantive violation of section 1962(c); “it suffices that he adopt the goal of furthering or facilitating the criminal endeavor.” (522 U.S. at 65.) The conviction was affirmed.
The case involves county-jail bribery, not a named crime family. CourtListener’s text of the holding paragraph contains OCR errors, so only the clean clause is quoted.