United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

ADDONIZIO v. U.S. , 405 U.S. 936 (1972)

February 22, 1972

Rehearing Denied April 3, 1972 in No. 71-744. See 405 U.S. 1048.

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The petitions for writs of certiorari are denied.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.

At the trial in this case there was much evidence of corrupt practices by the mayoral administration of petitioner Addonizio during his tenure as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. But the question posed to the

Page 405 U.S. 936 , 937

jury below was not whether these petitioners had engaged in corrupt practices but the narrower issue of whether these defendants had entered into and executed a criminal agreement to extract kickbacks from public contractors through threats of physical harm or economic ruin in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1951.1 Although the petitioners were charged with 65 substantive acts of coercive extraction of kickbacks, the key issue in the trial was who, if anyone, had conspired to commit these acts. Absent a finding that such a confederation had been formed most of the evidence which damaged the petitioners could not have been introduced at all inasmuch as this evidence was hearsay admitted provisionally under the so- called coconspirator exception. That the jury found a conspiracy to have existed, however, was under the circumstances of this trial the unsurprising and virtually inevitable result of the many disabilities imposed upon an accused by the ordeal of a multi-defendant, conspiracy prosecution. [Footnote 2] [405 U.S. 936 , 938]

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