RACKETEERING INDICTMENT IS REINSTATED
Sunday, November 27, 1983
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A labor racketeering indictment has been reinstated against a
former Rhode Island legislator and three other men in a Miami case that also involves the
reputed organized crime boss of New England, Raymond L.S. Patriarca.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
reversed a lower court's ruling, which had dismissed the indictment against former Rhode
Island Rep. Albert J. Le Pore, Joseph J. Vaccaro Jr. of Winchester, Mass., Arthur E. Coia
of North Providence, R.I., and Coia's son, Arthur A. Coia.
Patriarca and the four were indicted in Miami in 1981 on one count
of conspiring to use their influence over the Laborers International Union of North
America to funnel union business to insurance and service companies the men controlled.
The indictment charged the five then "looted the insurance
premiums through the use of kickbacks, payoffs, unearned salaries and fees, and improper
personal expenses."
A federal magistrate ruled that Patriarca, who suffers from angina
and other heart ailments, could not appear to answer the indictment. Because of his
condition, Patriarca also has not been tried on a charge that he ordered a 1968 slaying.
The other four racketeering defendants won a
ruling from a district judge that they could not be prosecuted because the five-year
statute of limitations period had expired.
The 11th Circuit said the lower court, relying on an earlier case
in the circuit involving the Drug Control Act, had ruled that the five-year period began
with the last alleged overt illegal act contained in the indictment.
The appeals court said the Supreme Court later
held that proof of an overt act was not necessary to prove conspiracy under the Drug
Control Act. Therefore, the 11th Circuit ruled, proof of overt acts is not required by the
racketeering law under which the defendants were charged, and "the
conspiracy may be deemed to continue as long as its purposes have neither been abandoned
nor accomplished."
"The government consistently alleged that the conspiracy
continued well into the limitations period," the appeals court said in the opinion,
dated Nov. 17.
If convicted, the men could be sentenced to 20
years in prison, fined $25,000 and stripped of union positions.
All content © 1983 THE MIAMI HERALD