To establish liability of the defendants under RICO, the government had to prove that the companies engaged in a pattern of racketeering acts in a scheme to defraud.
South Korean officials, however, quickly pointed out that the recent statements from Pyongyang followed a pattern of provocative acts followed by calls for talks that sought concessions.
President Bush said that the bombing in Indonesia appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda and that the attack was part of a pattern of terrorist acts that included recent violence in Kuwait and Yemen.
The statute was enacted 30 years ago to fight organized crime, although federal prosecutors have more recently used it against businesses and others it contends have engaged in a pattern of illegal acts.
It said drills by British forces would include missile launches and were part of a "pattern" of "hostile acts".
It also becomes clear that Gertler was his own worst enemy, and his suicide was the culmination of a pattern of self-destructive acts.
Arpaio was convicted for refusing to halt a pattern of blatantly unconstitutional acts in which immigrants were detained solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally and in which no criminal charges could be filed.
But the information from Mr. Mulcaire's notebooks, seized by the police in 2006, contradicts News International's claim, Mr. Jay said, suggesting instead a pattern of "wide-ranging illegal acts within the organization".
More momentously, a pattern of abuses of speech act institutions might deprive a person of an ability to perform speech acts: the inveterate welsher will, in time, lead others in his community to be unwilling to accept any promises he tries to make.
The warrant for their arrest said the group had "established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements".
