(Entertainment-NewsWire.com, August 13, 2013 ) San Francisco, CA -- Last Tuesday, the second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reinstated the conviction of Lawrence DiCristina. The high court stipulated that a lower-court judge had made a mistake
in his conclusion that DiCristina’s original conviction could not stand. The lower-court judge ruled on the grounds that poker was more a game of skill than chance.
The high court found these grounds irrelevant to the crime and ruled that sentencing should proceed. The judge ruled that the intention of the law was to prevent organized crime from operating gambling dens. No other crimes have been alleged.
DiCristina, and other associates of his, operated an underground poker club in the back room of a Staten Island warehouse between December 2010 and May 2011. Texas Hold 'em poker games were run at two tables, two times a week at a warehouse where DiCristina also sold electric bicycles.
The games violated New York state law, which specifies a gambling establishment as involving five or more people, conducted or managed as a business that has existed for more than a month, with gross revenue of more than $2,000 in any given day. "Thus, the question of whether skill or chance predominates in poker is inapposite to this appeal," said the court. When the law was passed, legislators worded it so it… "Would exclude the typical friendly game of poker." Judge Chester J. Straub, who ruled on Tuesday, said it was not important to judge whether poker was a game of chance or skill to decide on the case.
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