## Facts

- Indiana brought a civil action under its racketeering statutes alleging an adult bookstore engaged in a pattern of racketeering through repeated violations of state obscenity laws.
- The State sought injunctive relief and forfeiture of property allegedly used in the racketeering activity.
- The State separately requested immediate seizure of all property subject to forfeiture.
- After an ex parte hearing, a trial court ordered the immediate seizure and padlocking of the bookstore and all of its contents.
- The bookstore challenged the seizure on federal constitutional grounds; the Indiana Supreme Court upheld both the statutory scheme and the pretrial seizure procedure.
- In a separate prosecution, another bookstore operator faced misdemeanor obscenity charges and felony RICO charges using obscenity offenses as predicate acts.
- The trial court dismissed the RICO counts as unconstitutionally vague as applied to obscenity; the Indiana Court of Appeals reinstated them, and the state supreme court declined review.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in both matters and consolidated them.

## Issues

1. Whether the Court had jurisdiction to review a state-court decision reinstating criminal RICO charges before conviction or sentencing.
2. Whether pretrial seizure and padlocking of an entire bookstore and its inventory, based only on probable cause that the materials were obscene and part of a RICO pattern, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments as an impermissible prior restraint.
3. Whether a state RICO statute is unconstitutionally vague or otherwise invalid as applied when obscenity violations serve as predicate offenses.

## Decision

- The Court held it had jurisdiction because the federal issue had been finally decided in state court and immediate review fit an exception to the usual final-judgment rule.
- The Court held unconstitutional the procedure authorizing pretrial seizure and padlocking of the bookstore and all its contents based only on probable cause.
- The Court upheld the use of obscenity violations as predicate acts under the state RICO scheme and rejected the vagueness challenge as applied.

## Legal Principles

- Pretrial suppression of expressive materials requires heightened First Amendment safeguards; “mere probable cause” is insufficient to remove potentially protected speech from circulation.
- Wholesale pretrial seizure or closure of a bookstore and its inventory, without a prior judicial determination that specific items are obscene, operates as a prior restraint barred by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
- The State may use obscenity offenses as RICO predicates and may impose forfeiture or other penalties as subsequent punishment after a constitutionally adequate adjudication of obscenity and of the racketeering violation.
- A RICO statute is not unconstitutionally vague as applied merely because it incorporates obscenity-law violations as predicate offenses.

## Conclusion

The Court invalidated Indiana’s probable-cause, pretrial padlocking and seizure of an adult bookstore as an unconstitutional prior restraint, while allowing Indiana to treat obscenity offenses as RICO predicates and to seek forfeiture or other penalties only after proper adjudication.


Fort Wayne Books, Inc. v. Indiana, 489 U.S. 46 (1989)