Georgia high court upholds anti-gang law

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday upheld the state’s anti-gang statute, rejecting claims the law is unconstitutional.

In a unanimous opinion, the court allowed anti-gang prosecutions to proceed against two DeKalb County men charged with a 2006 murder and aggravated assault.

Efrain Rodriguez and Gilberto Rodriguez are accused of killing Jesus Silencio Ramirez by beating him over the head with a baseball bat and shooting him because he was a member of a rival gang. At the time, the Rodriguezes were members of the 18th Street gang, prosecutors said.

In a pre-trial appeal, lawyers for the Rodriguezes attacked the law for being poorly written. The statute is vague, overbroad and infringes on the right to freely associate, the lawyers claimed.

But Justice George Carley, writing for the court, said the law is consistent with the legislative statement of intent for the anti-gang law.

In that statement, the General Assembly recognized the right of any citizen to associate with others who share similar, lawful beliefs. The intent of the law, the Legislature said, is “to seek the eradication of criminal activity by street gangs by focusing upon patterns of criminal gang activity and upon the organized nature of street gangs.”

The law “provides a sufficiently definite warning to persons of ordinary intelligence of the prohibited conduct and…is not susceptible to arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” Carley wrote.