The Convergence of Crime and Terror By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

By 1931, Al Capone was a celebrity criminal with a litany of offenses that included murder, bribery, and running illegal breweries. But the government would have had trouble proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt for his most notorious activities, and charged him with tax evasion. Although the mobster swore that the government couldn't collect legal taxes from illegal money, he proved to be wrong -- and entered prison on May 5, 1932. This was the most famous example of a model that law enforcement adopted to deal with the unique problem of the mob, a model that placed a higher priority on neutralizing mob leaders and their activities than on winning the heaviest sentence. Thus, mob leaders were often prosecuted for, and convicted of, lesser offenses discovered by investigators. Because of the difficulty of convicting terrorists and their supporters of their most serious offenses, the "Al Capone model" of prosecuting for applicable lesser offenses has also been used frequently in terrorism cases.

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