Enterprise Corruption:

• Library: The Rulebook: The Definitive Quick Reference Guide for New York Criminal Law Practitioners (2020 Ed.)

► ENTERPRISE CORRUPTION: See Penal Law article 460.

Background: "The common challenge posed both federal and state legislators in penalizing enterprise corruption as a separate crime was to delineate the circumstances under which conduct already fitting under a criminal definition would additionally be subject to prosecution and more serious penalization for its connection to a criminal organization. To justify the superadded penalties for participation in a corrupt enterprise, and concomitantly to avoid sweeping relatively minor offenders into complex multidefendant, multicount prosecutions entailing a risk of draconian punishment, it was necessary to distinguish between what on the one hand were merely patterns of criminal conduct and what on the other were patterns of such conduct demonstrably designed to achieve the purposes and promote the interests of organized, structurally distinct criminal entities. Accordingly, both [the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and New York State's Organized Crime Control Act] require the prosecution to prove, in addition to a pattern of criminal activity, the existence of a...