To convict a person under the Kingpin Statute, the Government must prove: (1) a conspiracy with two or more persons; (2) that the purpose of the conspiracy included a scheme to manufacture, distribute or dispense in the state certain CDS as defined by the Kingpin Statute; (3) that the accused was a financier, organizer, supervisor or manager of at least one other person; and (4) that the accused occupied a high-level position in the conspiracy.

Some of the factors that maybe used to assist the government's effort to obtain a conviction under the Kingpin Statute are: (1) the number of people involved in the enterprise; (2) the actor's income, net worth and the life style; (3) the purity of substance; and, (4) the amount of money involved in the subject transactions.

Interestingly, the Kingpin Statute does not require the government to prove that a profit was realized by the enterprise. To be a "kingpin" there must be an organization of people engaged in drug activities in which the "kingpin" maintains a significant or important position and exercises "substantial authority or control over the activity." The core question is usually whether the kingpin occupied a "high-level position", which turns on the scope of the kingpin's authority or control and the number of people who are influenced by his/her power.

Under the Kingpin Statute, the government does not have to prove the exact number of people involved in the illicit scheme or enterprise. Unlike the federal kingpin statute, New Jersey's Statute does not require the accused to have three prior convictions or to show a "pattern" of illegal behavior. New Jersey requires only two additional conspirators where the federal kingpin statute requires at least five.

In a case decided in 1993, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that a so-called self-styled "middle man" was a kingpin where, among other things, he bragged about the number of years he was in the drug business and was associated with two lackeys who he "ordered" to find a scale for a transaction, to count money and to direct vehicular flow on his property.

The breath of this decision required a dissenting justice to observe that:

Under the majority's analysis, any three people who agree to sell drugs may be sentenced as kingpins. To test the principle, consider the case of three young people caught up on drugs. Two of them decide to go to New York to buy several hundred dollars worth of drugs. They invite a third with a car to join them. To afford their habit, they decide to sell some of the drugs to others in their neighborhood. One of them arranges the trip to New York and tells the others where to go in the City to get the drugs. Another, on return, decides how to get rid of the extra drugs. Which of these would the Legislature view as a "drug kingpin"? At least two of them fit the majority's definition. Is that all there is to the drug-kingpin law?

Copyright (c) 2008 Frank Luciano