548
Opinion of the Court
picted a variety of "hard core" sexual acts, were distributed throughout petitioner's adult entertainment empire.
Petitioner was sentenced to a total of six years in prison, fined $100,000, and ordered to pay the cost of prosecution, incarceration, and supervised release. In addition to these punishments, the District Court reconvened the same jury and conducted a forfeiture proceeding pursuant to § 1963(a)(2). At this proceeding, the Government sought forfeiture of the businesses and real estate that represented petitioner's interest in the racketeering enterprise, § 1963(a) (2)(A), the property that afforded petitioner influence over that enterprise, § 1963(a)(2)(D), and the assets and proceeds petitioner had obtained from his racketeering offenses, §§ 1963(a)(1), (3). The jury found that petitioner had an interest in 10 pieces of commercial real estate and 31 current or former businesses, all of which had been used to conduct his racketeering enterprise. Sitting without the jury, the District Court then found that petitioner had acquired a variety of assets as a result of his racketeering activities. The court ultimately ordered petitioner to forfeit his wholesale and retail businesses (including all the assets of those businesses) and almost $9 million in moneys acquired through racketeering activity.1
The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's forfeiture order. Alexander v. Thornburgh, 943 F. 2d 825 (CA8 1991). It rejected petitioner's argument that the application of RICO's forfeiture provisions constituted a prior restraint on speech and hence violated the First Amendment. Recognizing the well-established distinction between prior restraints and subsequent criminal punishments, the Court of Appeals found that the forfeiture here was "a criminal
1 Not wishing to go into the business of selling pornographic materials— regardless of whether they were legally obscene—the Government decided that it would be better to destroy the forfeited expressive materials than sell them to members of the public. See Brief for United States 26-27, n. 11.
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