Record
Court opinion
1981-06-17
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States
United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576 (1981)
Supreme Court decision of June 17, 1981 holding that the RICO term "enterprise" covers both legitimate and illegitimate enterprises, so a wholly criminal association in fact can be a RICO enterprise.
- Date
- 1981-06-17
- 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
- 452 U.S. 576 (1981), No. 80-808
- 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 June 17, 1981; No. 80-808. Turkette was charged with conspiracy to conduct the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. The indictment described the enterprise as an association in fact for illegally trafficking in narcotics, committing arsons and bribing local police officers. The First Circuit had held that RICO reached only legitimate enterprises.
The Court reversed. Of the statutory definition it said: “On its face, the definition appears to include both legitimate and illegitimate enterprises within its scope” (452 U.S. at 580), and it concluded that “insulating the wholly criminal enterprise from prosecution under RICO is the more incongruous position” (452 U.S. at 587).
The opinion grants that “the legislative history forcefully supports the view that the major purpose of Title IX is to address the infiltration of legitimate business” by organized crime, but holds that this does not narrow the statutory text. It cites section 904(a), the liberal-construction clause of the 1970 Act.