Sunday Morning Hot Tea - No. 9
In this edition
Topic of the Week – Mall Madness
Legal Question – What’s all this Racket-eering?
TOPIC THIS WEEK: Let’s Go to the Mall... Yesterday
When I was a kid, maybe nine years old, I remember sitting at home with my mom on a Saturday night, waiting to drive back up to our local mall and pick up my sister, Shannon, at closing time. She was around 15 then, outfitted with a pager my mom bought for her at that very mall. It was a simple model. You would call a number, then the pager would beep, notifying her of what number to call back. The pager was enclosed in an opaque, dark purple case and affixed to the belt loop of her Levi’s with a gold chain.
My mom and I had dropped Shannon and her friend, Laura, off at the Foley’s a few hours before. Foley’s, the now defunct department store chain, was my family’s standard mall meeting point. If we got dropped off, it was at the Foley’s. If we were to be picked up? Foley’s. Lost in the mall and couldn’t find each other? Meet at the Foley’s, specifically on the sofas right by the glass doors. This wasn’t due to any brand loyalty on our part. In fact, mama always said Foley’s was “too rich for our blood.” It was sheer convenience. Foley’s was situated on the back side of Town East Mall, meaning you could avoid the highway access road to get there.
That fateful night, we returned to Foley’s to pick up Shannon and Laura only to find them in hysterics. Some boys Laura tried picking up had stolen Shannon’s pager. They hadn’t stolen it from Shannon’s body, however. She had let Laura wear it, I suppose so that Laura could look cool in that certain way that only a pager can accomplish. But Laura’s canoodling proved dangerous and the pager was snatched away, never to be recovered. It turned out that the gold chain was no match for the clutches of a determined teenage boy.
Town East Mall was the center point of our suburban town back then. Erected in 1971, the mall was anchored by four stores. Sanger-Harris, later turned Foley’s, is currently a Macy’s. Years’ worth of my back-to-school clothes were purchased at another of the anchor stores, JC Penney.
Extremely fancy clothes like prom dresses and bridesmaids’ dresses were procured from down the way at the more upscale Dillard’s (formerly Tiche-Gottinger then Joske’s). Sears has stood stalwart since the beginning, but like hundreds of other locations across the country, it is set to close up shop in April 2021.
The thing about growing up a suburban kid is the mall becomes your be-all, end-all. It is a place that contains not just stores, but the hope and belief that something lies inside that is just what you need. That something waiting for you has the possibility to change your life. What is that thing? Doesn’t matter. That’s the mall’s magic. The perfect thing could be in there. You just have to go in and find out.
Just thinking of the baby-bottle-lighthouse affixed on our hometown shopping center’s roof jostles loose an avalanche of formative memories for me.
I feel like that descriptor requires photographic evidence for you non-Mesquitians.
My family got our first cell phone from a Cingular kiosk right outside the Foley’s. I believe having said that sentence, I now qualify for the senior breakfast special at Denny’s. I used to walk the aisles of KB Toys, craving a new board game or action figure or Barbie doll. I filled cellophane bags full of treats at The Sweet Factory. I got the clothes for my first ever grown-up job from the women’s section at JC Penney. I had some arguably too glamorous Glamour Shots taken for a friend’s birthday party outside the Sears.
Sure, my mall nostalgia may be turned up to 11 with the isolation from COVID, but I also think I’m not off the mark. Online shopping is great, don’t get me wrong. I love being able to Google something as specific as “Zack Morris divinity candle” and within days, have that same item arrive at my house. But the intrinsic value of a mall is that I shouldn’t have to Google that in the first place. I should be able to walk into a Spencer’s Gifts, and it should be there, waiting for me, beckoning me to buy it.
On the flip side, I will concede that malls are also breeding grounds for filthy teenagers making out, smoking cigarettes, doing petty crime. But that’s what gives us* the grit to become responsible adults.
* It feels disingenuous not to correct your thinking that I’ve done any of those things. To be clear: I have never made out, smoked a cigarette, or done a petty crime at a mall. This is not because I am better than anyone. It’s just that I currently am and always have been a big ol’ chicken shit scared of getting busted. But think of all the rebellious things I could have done! The mall gave me that chance. It was I who squandered it.
The original creator of malls, store designer and architect Victor David Gruen, saw the mall’s potential as a fully operational center point for the rising suburban communities. More than just stores, Gruen’s invention was to be the “third place” for many suburbanites. If home was first and work was second, then the mall could be that third place where families spent time away from the house, but not in the city.
Across many towns, that third place is now dead.
An entire genre of YouTubers has emerged around “dead malls.” A sub-genre of urban exploration, “dead mall” vloggers show the decrepit remains of long-abandoned malls, often interspersed with archival footage showing the malls in all their former glory.
This devolution was seemingly inevitable. What Gruen initially intended as an indoor oasis became overrun by commerce. Where his first mall in Edina, Minnesota included a bird sanctuary and a green space, later malls that sprung up in its wake included, rather than birds, Sbarro’s, Auntie Anne’s, and Cinnabon.
The Slamdance film Jasper Mall covers a year in the life of the titular shopping center in Jasper, Alabama. The town is home to just over 14,000 residents, many of whom use the mall as a sort of community center.
Seniors show up right as the doors are unlocked, walking shoes laced up, ready to make their loops. A foursome of septuagenarians gathers around a food court table, not to enjoy a quick bite, but to play dominoes and socialize for hours. In the introductory moments of the movie, the security guard/mall manager/jack of all trades, Mike, mentions that he lets the city’s homeless population in during cold winter months to protect them from the elements.
Malls have been on a steady decline over the past few years, a trend that has been exacerbated by COVID. But much like Gruen’s initial vision, malls across the country have begun trending back toward their community-centered roots. The emptied-out anchor space in Jasper that sat idle since 2017 is now home to a worship center, kid’s play place, and private school. One mall in Gwinnett, Georgia has utilized empty retail space to conduct mass COVID vaccinations, and it’s not the only one. Where once you tried on the latest pair of Reebok’s or sniffed CK-One from rectangular sample cards, soon you will be able receive your COVID vaccine.
The over-saturation of malls that began in the late 1970s and eventually tapered off in the late 1990s may have been the mall’s downfall. In Dallas, for instance, Valley View Mall’s traffic was significantly diminished when the Galleria was built less than a mile away. Updated and sleek, the Galleria sucked major brands away from Valley View, leaving the older mall to suck in its final dying gasps these past few years. Corridor by corridor have found themselves on the business end of a bulldozer.
Maybe I’ve just been cooped up for too long. Maybe I’m drunk on nostalgia and fuzzy feelings. But I fear that the loss of malls means the death of a major American institution that has powered suburban commerce for the past seven decades. Plus, where else am I supposed to get my Dippin’ Dots?
From the looks of things, the mall of my youth isn’t a total loss cause. In the past few years, Town East has received interest from some big retailers, with Dick’s Sporting Goods moving in as another anchor in 2018. Even with that, the old gray mall just ain’t what she used to be. She isn’t ghastly or gutted enough to find herself on a “dead mall” video, but neither is she beautiful or bountiful enough to be featured on a shopping vlogger’s channel. But still she stands, right where I remember her, doors open, ready for our return.
QUESTIONS FROM YOU – What’s all this racket-eering about?
This week’s question comes from Katie M.
“What EXACTLY is racketeering? I hear it all the time but have no actual concept of what it is.”
Excellent question, Katie. When most people hear the word “racketeering,” they think of the Mafia, which is spot on. When criminals get together and commit crimes repeatedly as part of a greater organization to make money, this “business” is called a racket. The mafiosos who participate in the racket are engaged in “racketeering.” The statutory definition is actually really broad by design so the feds can drag more bad guys in their net.
The federal racketeering law is officially called the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICOA or the RICO Act. This law was instrumental in punishing crime bosses because it allowed them to be charged for acts that they ordered others to commit. It closed the loophole that previously allowed a lot of crime bosses to get away with simply ordering other mobsters to commit murders and other crimes on their behalf.
Criminal Penalties for Racketeering
To convict someone of criminal racketeering charges, the government must prove five things beyond a reasonable doubt. The five requirements are in bold. My comments are in italics.
The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt:
(1) that an enterprise existed; The exact definition of an “enterprise” is super vague, pretty much on purpose. “Any individual or group of individuals”can be considered an enterprise. It doesn’t have to be an official legal entity like a corporation and doesn’t even have to involve more than one person.
(2) that the enterprise affected interstate commerce; This is because, under the Constitution, the federal government only has jurisdiction over crimes that affect interstate commerce. Interstate commerce is also a pretty broad concept. We spend about half a semester on it in law school, but generally if something touches money wires, involves the internet, or crosses state lines, it can be said to affect interstate commerce.
(3) that the defendant was associated with or employed by the enterprise; The defendant does not actually have do the act to get busted. He just has to be associated with the enterprise. This is how crime bosses are charged for murders they ordered their underlings commit for them.
(4) that the defendant engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity; “Pattern” is super loose on purpose as well. There have been several SCOTUS decisions discussing what constitutes a pattern. Generally, it’s when there is evidence of past or possible future racketeering activities, also known as “predicate acts.”
and
(5) that the defendant conducted or participated in the conduct of the enterprise through that pattern of racketeering activity through the commission of at least two acts of racketeering activity as set forth in the indictment. The standard is basically the commission of 2 acts in a span of 10 years.
If the government can prove all five of those elements, the defendant faces some pretty severe penalties. The underlying criminal acts, known as “predicate acts,” under the RICOA include murder, drug trafficking, human trafficking, gambling, securities fraud, money laundering, and mail and wire fraud, among others. If the predicate act was murder, the defendant could face life in prison. Otherwise, the defendant could face twenty years in prison or more under federal sentencing guidelines.
The passage of the RICO Act also revived the concept of asset forfeiture, meaning the government can seize the ill-gotten gains from the racketeering activities, in addition to assessing fines.
Critics of the RICO Act have called it “an arbitrary penalty enhancer and prosecutorial bargaining tool.” The criticism follows that if prosecutors have the possibility of charging a defendant of multiple lesser crimes or charging them under RICOA, the prosecutor can threaten the RICO charge which carries stricter penalties in order to extract a guilty plea to the lesser charges.
This was the case with Michael Vick, the football player who participated in a dog fighting ring. Prosecutors were ready to charge Vick under the RICOA, but they instead accepted a guilty plea to a lesser charge to avoid the necessity of a trial. Vick’s guilty plea was extracted under threat of a RICOA charge and its 20-year possible sentence, exactly the scenario critics described. Side note: the “30 for 30” episodes on Vick discuss this, and they are incredible.
Civil Penalties for Racketeering
Individuals who have been damaged by the commission of a RICO action can also sue in civil court under the RICO Act to recover damages. In fact, several New England Patriots fans attempted to sue the NFL for racketeering based on the organization’s handling of the Tom Brady Deflategate scandal. A federal judge was not convinced, however, and the lawsuit was dismissed.
Other Famous Cases of Racketeering
One of the most famous racketeering convictions was that of Gambino crime family boss, John Gotti. The predicate acts that made up his racketeering charges included five murders, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, and tax evasion. Because at least one of the predicate acts was murder, Gotti was eligible to be sentenced to life in prison, which he was.
William Rick Singer, the “mastermind” behind the college admissions scandal that saw Aunt Becky from Full House and Felicity Huffman in hot water, pled guilty to racketeering charges for running the whole enterprise. The predicate acts for his racketeering charge were things like mail fraud and wire fraud. He hasn’t been sentenced yet but faces up to 65 years in jail, fines, and forfeitures of the money he made from the bribes.
More recently, an anonymous source formerly affiliated with the Justice Department told Reuters that the government was exploring possible ways to charge the Capitol rioters with racketeering. The official DOJ spokesperson has not confirmed this. However, Senator Dick Durbin has advocated for using all available statutes to prosecute the rioters, including the RICO Act, which his spokesperson mentioned specifically.
The RICO Act was signed into law by President Nixon in 1970 to “win the battle” against organized crime by making crime bosses responsible for their foot soldiers’ actions. Whether that goal has been achieved or whether the RICOA has been misused to manipulate defendants into pleading out rather than going to trial seems to be a matter of perspective. Either way, it does provide prosecutors with an opportunity to pursue masterminds and mafia bosses for acts they ordered but didn’t commit.
I hope that answers your question, Katie! Thanks for sending.
Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don't send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.
Until next week, that’s the tea for two, and two for tea, and just the way it’s gotta be.
--
Thanks for subscribing! If you hate it, there’s a way to unsubscribe. I don't know how, but go for it. I won’t blame you. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.