South Cook News

Appearing as a guest on Jak Tichenor's Illinois Lawmakers program, Sen. John Curran (R-Lemont) was asked about ethics reform in Illinois in light of former speaker Madigan's indictment. Curran discussed expanding the state's grand jury, as well as the state's RICO Act. 

 "An expansion of the statewide grand jury ... would get the attorney general involved in investigating public corruption crimes," Curran said. "The attorney general has a statewide grand jury for limited purposes that he convenes. We can expand that to public corruption and actually get our state's top law enforcement official involved in this arena."

His other suggestion would be to expand the state RICO statute.

"These are the tools that the federal government uses to investigate public corruption. Our local law enforcement officials don't have those same tools. We need to equip and empower our local law enforcement officials with the same tools under RICO - state RICO - as they have under federal RICO," Curran said.

The federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act was signed into law in 1970. The RICO Act allows for all members of a corrupt organization to face prosecution. The law was initially designed to take down Mafia organizations but has since been used to target street gangs, drug cartels, politicians, and corrupt police departments. A person charged with violating RICO must be connected to an enterprise (such as a street gang or political party) and have engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity related to that enterprise. 35 activities are considered racketeering, including wire fraud, bribery, kidnapping, drug dealing, and murder. An individual must have committed at least two of those crimes in the last ten years to be charged under RICO.

In June of 2012, Then-Gov. Pat Quinn signed the Illinois Street Gang RICO Act into law, becoming the 32nd state in the nation to enact a RICO statute. Former Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez supported the legislation, stating that it would help tackle the city's gang violence problem.

The legislation is scheduled to expire in June 2022.

"Because the Illinois RICO statute is a direct response to Chicago's gang violence and is designed to protect the public from the pervasive violence committed by street gangs and other criminal enterprises, it excludes investigations into other types of organizations, such as white-collar crime, public corruption, and unions," Derek Keenan wrote in DePaul Law Review.

Madigan was indicted on 22 counts on federal racketeering and bribery charges on March 2. According to a release from the Department of Justice, "The 22-count indictment accuses Madigan of leading for nearly a decade a criminal enterprise whose purpose was to enhance Madigan's political power and financial well-being while also generating income for his political allies and associates." 

Madigan pleaded not guilty to all the federal charges placed against him.