Taking down a famed mobster is not for the meek. It was a job for Eunice Carter.
Born to a prominent Black family in Atlanta, Carter became the first Black woman to graduate from Fordham Law School in 1932. She became an assistant prosecutor under Thomas Dewey, the future presidential candidate, who spent the decade targeting Charles “Lucky” Luciano.
Dewey assigned his male prosecutors to investigate Luciano’s connections to crimes like extortion, drug trafficking and murder. Eunice, the only woman on the team, was assigned to investigate illicit sex work.
“In other words, she was assigned to a backwater, essentially busy work, to keep the public happy,” Stephen Carter, Eunice’s grandson and the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, told The Hill. “But where all the other assistants failed to tie Luciano to any criminal activity, Eunice, to everyone’s surprise, constructed the case that Luciano profited from prostitution in New York City. That was the only charge on which he was ever tried, and he was convicted.”
Although her strategy predates the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act now used against criminal organizations, Carter laid out the eventual strategy prosecutors would use to go after the mob, said Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum.
“The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act did not become law until 1970, but there is a parallel goal: to go after an entire syndicate for its collective crimes, rather than prosecuting one or two individuals for specific acts,” Schumacher told The Hill.
— Zack Budryk
photo: Getty Images