The
Mongols motorcycle club logo is seen on a member's jacket at a news
conference in Los Angeles. (Ted Soqui / Corbis via Getty Images)
After
a decade spent fighting the Mongols motorcycle club and its violent
members in court, federal prosecutors appeared poised last month to
deliver a decisive blow when a jury voted to strip the notorious club of
trademarks it holds on its coveted logo.
But
a federal judge in Santa Ana Thursday let the Mongols off the ropes,
ruling that taking control of the insignia from club would be
unconstitutional and refusing to enforce the jury’s decision.
Denying
Mongol members the ability to display the logo on their leather riding
jackets and elsewhere would overstep the right to free expression
embedded in the 1st Amendment, as well as the 8th Amendment’s ban on
excessive penalties, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter found.
“There
is a realistic danger that the transfer of the rights associated with
the symbol to the government will have a chilling effect,” Carter wrote.
In
a sternly worded, 51-page ruling, Carter unambiguously knocked down
each of the arguments prosecutors had made in favor of wresting away
control of the trademarks the club’s leaders used to maintain tight
control over its image and membership.
In
doing so, the judge dealt a significant setback to the novel legal
strategy prosecutors had concocted in the case, which aimed to apply
federal forfeiture laws, which are typically used to take cash, houses
and other tangible property, to the abstract rights associated with a
trademark.
Carter
said the government was well within its rights to take weapons,
ammunition and other contraband seized in raids against the Mongols.
However,
likening the Mongols to a ship, the judge wrote, “The Government is not
merely seeking forfeiture of the ship’s sails. In this prosecution the
United States is attempting … to change the meaning of the ship’s flag.”
Prosecutors’
claim that rights to the insignia should be stripped because it was a
vital part of the club’s criminal activity — a powerful image used to
“generate fear among the general public” — fell far short of clearing
the high barrier the 1st Amendment requires the government to clear if
it wants to restrict speech, Carter wrote.
Since
the group was formed in late 1960s, the image of a Genghis Khan figure
in sunglasses riding a motorcycle beneath the group’s name has been the
foundation of the Mongols’ identity, which over the years has included
involvement in drug dealing and violence by many members.
Only
those who have been admitted to the inner ranks of the insular group
are allowed to stitch the large patches of the insignia onto their
riding apparel. And in the closed-off world of motorcycle clubs, built
largely around rivalries and alliances with other groups, the logo
serves as an unmistakable signal to friends and enemies.
“We
are ecstatic that the Mongols motorcycle club has been able to win this
1st Amendment battle for itself and all motorcycle clubs,” said Stephen
Stubbs, an attorney for the Mongols. “The government has clearly
overreached into a realm that the Constitution does not allow. They
tried to ban symbolic speech.”
In
a statement, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office said, “We are
disappointed in the ruling,” adding that prosecutors believe the
country’s laws obligated Carter to order the trademarks to be forfeited.
The government is “definitely considering an appeal,” he said.
In
December, after a lengthy trial, a jury convicted the Mongols
organization of racketeering and conspiracy charges, finding that the
group shared responsibility for murder, attempted murder and drug crimes
committed by individual members.
The verdict cleared the way for prosecutors to go after the trademarks as part of the sentence against the club.
Following
more testimony and legal wrangling over the forfeiture issue, the jury
voted unanimously that the Mongols should lose control of the
trademarks, finding that there was a direct link between the image and
one of the criminal charges the club faced — conspiracy to commit
racketeering.
Calling
the verdict the “first of its kind in the nation,” U.S. Atty. Nicola
Hanna said seizing the Mongols’ trademarks would serve to “attack the
sources of a criminal enterprise’s economic power and influence.”
But
rather than order the trademarks forfeited, Carter set a hearing to
examine, among other things, the 1st Amendment issues raised by the
verdict.
When
both sides arrived in court Thursday to make their cases for signing
off on the jury’s decision, Carter — who during the trial made no secret
of his concerns that the novel legal strategy crossed constitutional
lines — had his order already written.
The
judge said 1st Amendment issues were undeniably at play because the
type of trademarks the Mongols own, called collective membership marks,
don’t serve any commercial purpose but only help members to identify
themselves as part of a group.
And
because the jury had found the logo was tied directly to the conspiracy
charge but not the murders and other violent crimes with which the club
was accused of participating, Carter concluded forfeiting the
trademarks would violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment, which forbids
the government from imposing excessive punishments.
Denying members control over the logo would be an “unjustified and grossly disproportionate” punishment, he wrote.
In laying out the rationale for his decision, Carter revisited the long history of the government’s pursuit of the Mongols.
Formed
in the 1970s in Montebello by a group of mostly Latino men who
reportedly had been rejected for membership by the Hells Angels
motorcycle gang, the club has expanded over the decades to include
several hundred members in chapters across Southern California and
elsewhere.
In
2008, nearly 80 Mongols members were charged in a sweeping racketeering
case that included an array of alleged murders, assaults and drug
deals.
Prosecutors
devised the strategy of stripping the Mongols of their trademarks in
that earlier case. At a news conference announcing the charges,
then-U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O’Brien laid out the strategy, saying that
taking control of the trademarked insignia would give the government the
authority to force Mongols members to remove the image from their
riding jackets.
All
but two of the defendants in the case pleaded guilty and a judge agreed
the trademarks should be forfeited, but ultimately reversed himself
after deciding none of the people charged in the case actually owned the
trademarks.
That
led prosecutors to try again with a second racketeering case that was
largely the same as the first but which named only one defendant: Mongol
Nation, the entity that prosecutors say is made up of the club’s
leaders and owns the trademarks.
Carter
has not yet imposed a sentence on the Mongols in the current
racketeering case. The punishment could include monetary fines.
“Judge
Carter’s decision recognizes that there are many punishments and
penalties that can be imposed, but denying speech rights raises serious
1st Amendment concerns,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school
at UC Berkeley.
Joseph
Yanny, a criminal defense attorney who argued the case for the Mongols,
expressed disappointment that the judge had rejected his requests that
the verdict be tossed out altogether.
But
he acknowledged that allowing the club to maintain control over its
logo was a major win. Losing the trademarks, he had said during the
trial, would have amounted to a “death sentence” for the Mongols.
The
government’s case, he said, was an attempt to impose “collective guilt”
on an organization for the crimes committed by some of its members.
“That’s never been the law in this country,” he said.
