The federal extortion and racketeering case against 14 former officers and members of Laborers Local 91 will have little or no impact on the union's future leadership, according to a top official of Laborers International Union of North America.
"The criminal law is the floor, not the ceiling, regarding conduct of union leaders and members," said Robert Luskin, LIUNA's general executive board attorney. "They have obligations under the union constitution that are much more demanding than the criminal law. The matters for which they've been charged violate their duties to the union. The fact that that conduct may or may not be criminal has very little bearing on whether or not they have fulfilled their obligation to the union."
Defense attorneys for the 14 filed motions last week asking U.S. District Court Judge Richard Arcara to dismiss most of the counts levied last May, citing a Supreme Court ruling in an abortion-protest case as a precedent.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles Wydysh and Brett Harvey filed a response late Friday afternoon disputing the defense motion. The prosecutors' submission said the government plans to submit a superseding indictment to a federal grand jury this week, one that would underscore the differences between the Local 91 case and the Supreme Court case, Scheidler v. the National Organization for Women.
"If the grand jury returns a superseding indictment, the defendants' motion to dismiss should be dismissed as moot," the federal filing said.
In February, the Supreme Court ruled that a group of anti-abortion protesters were not liable for financial damages to abortion clinics under the Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act and the Hobbs Act, both federal laws enacted to combat organized crime.
NOW filed suit on behalf of several clinics in 1986, eventually winning $258,000 in damages from the protesters, as well as an order to keep away from the clinics for 10 years.
By an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion-rights supporters could not sue anti-abortion groups based on the two laws, but did not open a door to aggressive clinic protests, which were banned under a separate 1994 federal law.
In the Local 91 case, the indicted, who include former business manager Michael "Butch" Quarcini, ex-president Mark Congi and former vice president Salvatore Bertino, are charged with using violence and intimidation against contractors who didn't employ their members, members of other unions and non-union workers.
In its decision in the Scheidler case, the Supreme Court ruled that the protesters didn't gain any tangible or intangible property by their actions. The foundation of the federal case against Local 91 is that the union did gain jobs and money through a campaign of intimidation, a point the superseding indictment is meant to clarify in light of the Supreme Court's February ruling.
To put it in English, the abortion protesters wanted to stop all abortions -- they didn't want to perform them themselves. In the Local 91 case, the violent pickets and outright attacks weren't aimed at stopping construction projects altogether, but at ensuring the demands of Quarcini and his underlings were satisfied.
Last May, the feds charged Quarcini, Congi and the other 12 defendants with a total of 33 felonies, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The accompanying 54-count indictment outlined a a reign of terror in which anyone who stood in the way of the self-described "goon squad" faced threats, beatings or worse.
Among the allegations made in the original indictment:
The prosecutors' filing last week said the defense motion to dismiss should be denied, even without a superseding indictment, arguing that the determination of whether the defendants' actions constitute a violation of federal law should be decided at trial, not beforehand. Wydysh and Harvey cited a number of precedents in which dismissal of charges was eventually overturned based on that principle.
Luskin, LIUNA's Washington, D.C.-based attorney, said he's following the federal case, but that it won't have any bearing on the trusteeship imposed on Local 91 by the international after the indictments, or the accompanying suspension of officers.
"An acquittal wouldn't mean the end of our proceedings," Luskin said. "We would review the conduct charged and other information obtained by our investigation. If they were found by the hearing officer to have violated those standards set forth in the LIUNA constitution, they would be disciplined."
Luskin said further disciplinary proceedings are on hold until the criminal case is resolved. "They've been charged individually in a disciplinary case," Luskin said. "We've stayed that so they don't have to fight on two fronts."
According to the original indictment, Bertino once threatened an employee of a targeted contractor by telling him, "the fun doesn't begin until the feds leave."
Despite some highly creative lawyering by a high-powered defense team, the feds aren't going anywhere.
And if LIUNA's regulators have their way, Bertino's idea of "fun" will remain little more than a dark part of Local 91's history.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 29 2003 |