Also known as: predicate offense · predicate offences · predicate crime · underlying offense
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
Crimes that serve as the foundation for derivative criminal liability under doctrines such as felony murder or racketeering statutes. The underlying offense supplies the required element that elevates the conduct to the more serious charge.
Priscilla Parks ordered an emergency exit chained shut in violation of a local fire safety ordinance classified as a misdemeanor not malum in se. When a small fire broke out, Pedro Pacheco could not reach the nearest exit and died of smoke inhalation. Because the death was a foreseeable result of the chaining, the misdemeanor qualifies as a predicate offense supporting involuntary manslaughter liability.
Pamela Phillips and Preston Pratt directed a scheme that used mail and wire fraud as repeated acts. Each fraud count functioned as a predicate offense that together formed the pattern of racketeering activity needed to establish the RICO violation against their enterprise.
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Priya Prasad purchased computer equipment under terms that later gave rise to a fraud claim. When the buyer alleged that the seller's conduct also violated a federal statute, the underlying fraud served as the predicate offense that triggered additional civil remedies beyond the contract breach.
At common law only a small and narrowly defined set of felonies could serve as predicate offenses for felony murder. Modern codes have broadened the category to include a much wider range of felonies as underlying offenses.
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Under the majority common-law rule a misdemeanor that is not malum in se qualifies as a predicate offense for manslaughter only when the death was a foreseeable result of committing the misdemeanor. A minority of courts limit the doctrine to misdemeanors that are malum in se.
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Congress considered but ultimately rejected language that would have restricted predicate offenses to domestic offenses. The enacted text refers to convictions in any court, leaving open whether foreign convictions may qualify as predicate offenses.
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…Footnotes [^maj-1]: We express no view on the related question whether a foreign government, based on wire or mail fraud predicate offenses, may bring a civil action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for a scheme to defraud it of taxes. See Attorney General of Canada v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco…