Prosecutors in the Atlanta cheating scandal spent the weekend offering last-minute plea deals to defendant educators convicted on federal racketeering charges -- and the court has urged the disgraced teachers to accept those odd offers.
Why? Well, it’s not solely about eleventh-hour mercy and benevolence, and it isn’t because prominent citizens like civil rights leader, Andrew Young, Atlanta’s former mayor and a onetime United Nations ambassador, stepped forward yesterday to beg the sentencing judge for leniency.
It’s mostly because there is a very good chance the defendants’ convictions will be overturned in future appeals, since prosecuting them under the RICO law for the widespread scholastic testing fraud they committed is an exceptional use of the statute, and may even be judged excessive.
Prior to this unique application, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act was essentially used to go after, and to stiffen the prison sentences of, members of organized crime such as mafia bosses, their hitmen, and druglords.
While the Atlanta cheating scandal itself, which originally involved nearly 200 public school officials, may bear some resemblance to “a racket” abstractly, it certainly doesn’t meet the classic definition of a dangerous crime syndicate.
And, although the educators’ illicit scheme may also have included self-enrichment and an atmosphere of intimidation that compelled nonparticipants to remain silent, that alone may not be enough to uphold their RICO guilty verdicts.
Unless, now, altering test scores to advance thousands of otherwise failing schoolchildren is suddenly tantamount to mayhem and murder.
