Obstruction of justice / witness tampering predicate (18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512)

OR · 18usc1962:racketeering.obstruction

Perjury or discovery misconduct alone is not a predicate act unless it constitutes indictable obstruction of justice under § 1503 or witness tampering under § 1512.

Exact element source

racketeering activity

Source: docroot/ir/usc/title18.jsonl#title18_sec1962; Unicode character offsets [148:169] (end exclusive); SHA-256 6caae47f43b5ab0899b660616e298363bd36f9f540d915c2be11eb7126f5e27d.

All variants

Recorded DB variant labels, including zero-count variants
Variant	Description	Merits instance blocks	Distinct cases	Example cases (up to 3 per group)
perjury-as-predicate/only-via-mail-fraud-or-section-1503		0 Satisfied 0; not satisfied 0; excluded context 1	0	No counted merits examples Excluded context examples: /f2d/976/1016-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit · 1992 — rule-announced/merits

How courts decided this element

Annotation blocks, including explicitly excluded context
Case	Element	Holding and scope	Variant	Exact source quotations
/f2d/976/1016-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit · 1992	Obstruction of justice / witness tampering predicate (18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512)	not_reached Excluded from merits counts rule-announced / merits claim: (c),(d); count: the litigation cover-up; subject: count=the litigation cover-up	perjury-as-predicate/only-via-mail-fraud-or-section-1503	For starters, we know that telling a lie or committing perjury is not per se a RICO predicate act for one simple reason: it is not included among the list of predicate acts in 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1). Source: `docroot/ir/caselaw/f2d_976.jsonl#/f2d/976/1016-01`; Unicode character offsets [14743:14939] (end exclusive); SHA-256 `ebc98ea70879c4cb40e7f64b87cbfd47e72732fe1a73dbca8733e49576748b79`. Evidence kind: rule; polarity: not recorded; absent flag: 0; quoted-rule flag: 0 (1 = tagged; 0 = not tagged) We need not decide that issue because, as we discuss more fully below, even assuming the defendants’ deeds qualify as predicate acts, Midwest still fails to show the requisite pattern of racketeering. Source: `docroot/ir/caselaw/f2d_976.jsonl#/f2d/976/1016-01`; Unicode character offsets [17495:17695] (end exclusive); SHA-256 `ebc98ea70879c4cb40e7f64b87cbfd47e72732fe1a73dbca8733e49576748b79`. Evidence kind: held; polarity: not recorded; absent flag: 0; quoted-rule flag: 0 (1 = tagged; 0 = not tagged)

Court interpretations

interpretation

For starters, we know that telling a lie or committing perjury is not per se a RICO predicate act for one simple reason: it is not included among the list of predicate acts in 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1).

/f2d/976/1016-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit · 1992

For starters, we know that telling a lie or committing perjury is not per se a RICO predicate act for one simple reason: it is not included among the list of predicate acts in 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1).

Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f2d_976.jsonl#/f2d/976/1016-01; Unicode character offsets [14743:14939] (end exclusive); SHA-256 ebc98ea70879c4cb40e7f64b87cbfd47e72732fe1a73dbca8733e49576748b79.

Perjury or discovery misconduct alone is not a predicate act unless it constitutes indictable obstruction of justice under § 1503 or witness tampering under § 1512.