I guess my question is largely motivated by “the Sopranos,” “Goodfellas,” and other television shows and movies about organized crime. It seems as if, in every one of these depictions of organized crime syndicates, the syndicates are able to avoid convictions and thus keep their members out of jail by threatening witnesses and jury members.
I am wondering, given a criminal syndicate’s apparently unlimited ability to threaten and bribe witnesses, jury members, and, I guess, judges and prosecutors, how the government can EVER successfully prosecute mobsters.
I recognize that mobsters (e.g. John Gotti and many others) do wind up doing jail time, so obviously there is something that I am missing.
But say mobster A is on trial. Can’t his fellows simply go to every jury member, and say, look, we’ll kill you and your whole family in some gruesome way if you don’t vote to acquit? Why doesn’t this happen more often? Indeed, why isn’t this a foolproof method to avoid conviction?
Its not hard to get a jury tampering charge, either, AFAIK. If your mob buddies so much as approach a jury member and he tells the judge then you’re going to have even more problems, and a seriously unhappy judge in charge.
The easier way would be to instill a fear of retribution in ALL jurors. If a mafia member is ever convicted, just kill all the jurors/their families afterward. Future jurors will get the message without having to be approached individually.
Of course, this demonstrates why the mob doesn’t run everything: it’s tough to cover up that many murders.
The mob doesn’t run everything because everything doesn’t have as high a profit margin as gambling, drugs, and prostitution. You don’t go into the mob so you can work hard.
Of course, the whole point of doing that is that you wouldn’t need to cover it up, right?
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client is accused of murdering twelve people, just like you, who found him guilty on a previous murder charge. I rest my case.” (Unapologetically stolen from Scott Adams.)
Well, the first problem is that you’re treating the Sopranos and GoodFellas as a documentary rather than fiction.
The scenario you’ve described only works if the organization is, well, extremely well organized, ruthless, absolutely clandestine, and has effectively unlimited resources, or at least resources greater than the law enforcement agencies opposing you.
Another disadvantage is that if the law enforcement agencies know that jurors and the judiciary face lethal retribution, they may be less than fastidious in taking prisoners. That is, things would effectively devolve into a war-like situation – not a good idea if you’re going up against a relatively competent and non-corrupt government.
The Sopranos and the mythic “Godfather” notions aside I think the biggest problem is that the mob (or most criminal “organizations” for that matter) are not the best and brightest society has to offer, and are largely comprised of greedy, paranoid people who are not terribly bright and do lots of stupid things that enable them to be proscecuted and caught.
Threats of reprisal will only work if the mob can identify and “get to” the jurors, and the justice system can make this very difficult (bordering on impossible) to do.
There are only so many people in the mob, and only so many willing to become part of it. If things got too far out of hand, there would be over a hundred million folks united in a rub-them-out-at-all-costs campaign.
There’s also a cost-benefit analysis. Jury tampering can bring a lot of heat, especially in a high profile case like, say, John Gotti. Couple this with the fact that it’s one guy going to jail, who is probably not you, weighed against racking up some serious criminal conspiracy charges that aren’t going to be too difficult to prosecute. Better to just cut that one guy off, and start splitting up his share of the pie.
Mob resources aren’t unlimited, as noted, and the costs of keeping every wiseguy out of trouble would bankrupt the organization. Having a few guys go to prison once in a while is just one of the costs of doing business.
Erm, if 12 jurors in a mob case were all murdered, the public wouldn’t exactly question too much when the next “drug bust” went wrong and ended up with a lot of dead mobsters. It’s just not worth it. The mafia relies heavily on 1) reputation, and 2) low profile. It is a delicate balance.
The problem with movies and television is that they are, by nature, sensationalist, and take everything to the extreme. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be interested. Nobody is terribly interested in an extortion, smuggling, and underground gambling racket unless a few dozen people die with the requisite one-liners.
Traditionally, the mob goes into businesses with artificial high profit margins, i.e, illegal activities.
They were in booze when it was illegal, and now are in drugs.
The only thing the Drug War has accomplished, is in making the mafia very much richer( it certainly has not reduced the amount of drugs). Those who support the Drug War, support the mafia.
The easiest way to get rid of the mafia, to bankrupt it, is to make things legal. I would think that legalized gambling hurt them almost as much as repealing prohibition.
Laws concerning gambling seem esp. nutty. In view of the existance of so many legal forms of gambling (legal casinos, legal betting on horse races, state lotteries, etc.), what’s the justification for keeping illegal the forms that remain so? The criminal justice system is overburdened; why does it have to use time, effort, and money on some forms of gambling, when so many other forms are legal?
These are not necessarily the smartest people in the world.
If Joey Thumbs decides he has to kill Bobby No-Neck, the police don’t get the kind of pressure to investigate that they would if he’d killed Suzy Homemaker and 11 of her fellow jurors.
I suspect organized crime isn’t really all that well organized. They have to spend an enormous amount of time and effort not only in comitting their own crimes and avoiding the authorities but also in making sure that nobody who works for them is skimming or trying to take their spot, that none of their peers are trying to expand laterally into their action, and in trying to take over from the guy one rung up without letting him know about it. This is probably also why university faculties don’t run the world.
Aside from personal friends, who cares if Joey Thumbs does get indicted? His bosses, if they thought he might talk, would probably just try to have him killed. If he’s not going to talk, well, other guys can run his action while he’s inside, if he can’t do it from there. His peers are the ones who’ll see the chance to get that job and all the skimming and advancement opportunities it presents, and his underlings are looking at a new organizational structure that could provide promotions, and at some level of chaos that will allow for a little extracurricular earning for them too. This may not apply for the guys at the very top, but there aren’t that many of them.
THe other thing nobody has really mentioned is that the Maifa isn’t nearly as powerful as it used to be. While “Goodfellas” is based off true events and real people, it ends in the 1980’s, and the maifa was heavily cracked down on in the intervening period. Part of it was the fact that “Omerta”, or Silence (not talking telling the authorities anything) kinda died out among the younger generations of mafiaos.
Reminds me of a quote I heard on a documentary about Los Vegas: “The mob wasn’t run out of Vegas . . . they were bought out by the corporations.”
I suspect the same thing would happen if prostitution and drugs were completely legalized. Corporations have huge financial resources to take over a market; the mob is small change in comparison. Yeah, the mob’ll break your kneecaps if you get in their way, but a corporation has an even more dangerous weapon: they’ll sue, and keep you in court for the next ten thousand years.