POSNER, Circuit Judge.
Ten former Chicago policemen — the “Marquette 10” as they came to be called in the course of their celebrated three-month trial — appeal from their convictions for protecting narcotics dealers in Chicago’s Marquette district. The evidence, the sufficiency of which the defendants do not contest, shows that for more than three years the defendants protected two large drug distributorships in exchange for money and goods. They not only failed to arrest the distributors or their employees; they warned the distributors of impending raids by honest policemen, ignored many complaints from citizens about the activities of the distributors (who flaunted their wares so boldly that the press of customers caused traffic jams), and even beat up and threatened to kill a drug dealer who was competing with the protected distributors. The jury convicted all of the defendants of aiding and abetting federal narcotics violations, of extortion in violation of the Hobbs Act, and of violating the RICO statute. The judge sentenced each of the defendants to prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years, followed by five years of probation.
The most difficult issue raised by these appeals is the interrelationship between the federal aiding and abetting statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2, and the so-called “kingpin” statute, 21 U.S.C. § 848 (Continuing Criminal Enterprises, Title II, § 408, of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970), which requires that heavy penalties be imposed on a person who commits a felony narcotics violation that “is a part of a continuing series of violations ... (A) which are undertaken by such person [the ‘kingpin’] in concert with five or more other persons with respect to whom such person occupies a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management, and (B) from which such person obtains substantial income or resources.” 21 U.S.C. § 848(b)(2). The minimum penalty for the kingpin is 10 years in prison with no possibility of parole. The maximum prison sentence is life imprisonment, again without possibility of parole. Section 848 is the only federal criminal statute that does not allow parole. See U.S. Dept, of Justice, U.S. Parole Comm’n, Rules and Procedures Manual § 2.2-04 at p. 7 (Oct. 1, 1983). And because violation can be punished by life imprisonment, neither suspension nor probation is possible even if the sentence is for a shorter term than life. This is clear from 18 U.S.C. § 3651; but to make assurance doubly sure the kingpin statute expressly forbids suspension or probation. See 21 U.S.C. § 848(c). However, time off for good behavior is allowed from other than life sentences; and for sentences of 10 or more years this enables the prisoner, by behaving himself, to cut his sentence by a third, and sometimes even more. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 4161, 4162.
The defendants in this case are not the kingpins; the drug distributors whom they protected are (and in separate proceedings were sentenced to 15-year prison terms under the kingpin statute). The defendants argue that Congress, in establishing such harsh penalties for being a drug kingpin, could not have intended to subject mere aiders and abettors to equivalent penalties. No doubt this is correct, as the government concedes, with respect to those whom the kingpin organizes, supervises, or manages. Otherwise there would be no differential punishment for the kingpin. His lowliest accomplices — mixers, runners, look-outs — would be subject to the same punishment as he, since the aider and abettor statute, as we are about to see, allows the aider and abettor to be punished as a principal. When a statute reveals on its face, as section 848 does, the legislators’ purpose to make one class of persons punishable more heavily than another, a court will not defeat that purpose by applying the general aiding and abetting statute to the second class. Cf. United States v. Southard, 700 F.2d 1, 20 (1st Cir.1983). That is what we would be doing if we applied 18 U.S.C. § 2 to the kingpin’s non-supervisory employees. But that is not what we are being asked to do. The defendants are not the kingpins’ employees, but the kingpins’ police protectors. Congress probably would have wanted them to be punishable, in an appropriate case, as severely as the kingpins themselves. It is difficult for a large illegal enterprise to flourish without official protection; and the large revenues that such enterprises earn (the source of the kingpin’s “substantial income or resources,” referred to in the statute) enable them to dangle attractive bribes before policemen and other officials. The effectiveness of the kingpin statute might therefore be reduced if a kingpin’s police protectors, such as these defendants, whose efforts enabled large drug enterprises to flourish brazenly for years, could never be punished as aiders and abettors. True, they could still be punished for aiding and abetting a violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846, a statute that also carries heavy penalties. But the penalties are not nearly so heavy as those under section 848, so that under the position urged by these defendants the aider and abettor could not be punished as severely as the principal even if he was just as culpable. We do not think that Congress intended this result.
A harder question (not separately raised by the defendants, but implicit in their challenge to the application of the aider and abettor statute to them) is whether, in sentencing the aider and abettor of a narcotics kingpin, the judge is bound by the minimum sentence provisions of section 848. Although a minimum prison sentence of 10 years with no possibility of parole cannot be precisely equated to any sentence that allows for parole, it is approximately as severe as a 21-year sentence with parole. A person sentenced to 10 years in prison with no possibility of parole who earned his full good-time credits under 18 U.S.C. § 4161 (but not the additional “industrial good time” credits that can be earned under section 4162) would serve 7 years, while a person sentenced to 21 years in prison would be eligible for parole after 7 years, see 18 U.S.C. § 4205(a), though he would not be assured of parole then. (Parole is never mandatory in the federal system, see 18 U.S.C. § 4206, and in fact most prisoners serve more than the one-third minimum before being paroled.) Obviously, either a minimum 10-year sentence without possibility of parole, or a minimum 21-year sentence with that possibility, takes from the trial judge a great deal of his sentencing discretion. This was Congress’s desire with regard to the sentencing of the kingpin himself; but we must decide whether, in interpreting a different statute, the aiding and abetting statute, we should impute to Congress the same desire with regard to all of the kingpin’s aiders and abettors.
The aiding and abetting statute states: “Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.” 18 U.S.C. § 2(a). Although this language, like that of its predecessor provision (“Whoever ... aids, abets, [etc.] is a principal,” Act of March 4, 1909, § 332, 35 Stat. 1152), makes clear that an aider and abettor can be punished as severely as the principal, it does not make clear that he must always be punished so severely. History is against such an interpretation. The distinction between “principal” and “aider and abettor” goes back to the time when all felonies carried the same sanction — death. By enabling the courts to punish a class of less culpable offenders — aiders and abettors as distinct from principals — less severely, the distinction introduced a welcome element of gradation into the sentencing of felons. See 4 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 39 (1769); Perkins, Parties to Crimes, 89 U.Pa.L.Rev. 581, 613-15 (1941). But as judges acquired more and more sentencing discretion, the need to distinguish between principals and aiders and abettors diminished, and since it was sometimes a difficult decision to make there was a movement to abolish it with regard to determining criminal liability. This movement culminated in 18 U.S.C. § 2(a). But the purpose was not to make sure that aiders and abettors were always punished as severely as principals. Indeed, in passing the statute Congress must have realized that judges would use their sentencing discretion to proportion the severity of the sentence to the aider and abettor’s fault. The history suggests that, rather than being intended to limit sentencing discretion, the abolition of the distinction between principals and aiders and abettors presupposed such discretion.
Since section 848 does not prescribe all penalties but only minimum penalties, equating the punishment of a kingpin’s aider and abettor to that of the kingpin would not prevent the judge from giving the aider and abettor a lighter sentence, provided that the judge was minded to sentence the kingpin to a longer term than the minimum provided in the statute. But the curtailment of sentencing discretion would still be very great, because the minimum sentences are so severe and because aider and abettor liability is defined so broadly. Learned Hand’s classic definition requires only that the alleged aider and abettor “in some sort associate himself with the venture, that he participate in it as something that he wishes to bring about, that he seek by his action to make it succeed.” United States v. Peoni, 100 F.2d 401, 402 (2d Cir.1938); see also Nye & Nissen v. United States, 336 U.S. 613, 619, 69 S.Ct. 766, 770, 93 L.Ed. 919 (1949); United States v. Farid, 733 F.2d 1318, 1319 (8th Cir.1984); United States v. Beck, 615 F.2d 441, 448-49 (7th Cir.1980). There is nothing said about the magnitude and essentiality of the aider and abettor’s role. A policeman who took an isolated bribe from a kingpin but did not engage in a prolonged and systematic protection racket, as these defendants did, would still be an aider and abettor of the kingpin, and therefore under the view that the aiding and abetting statute mechanically incorporates the whole punishment schedule of section 848 would have to be sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison without possibility of parole. Yet if there were no minimum the judge might sentence the policeman to only two or three years in prison and the policeman would be eligible for parole after serving a third of that time.
It would be artificial to assume, in the absence of any evidence, that the Congressmen who voted for the kingpin statute in 1970 were conscious that the aiding and abetting statute (last amended in 1951) might interact with the minimum penalties in the new statute to curtail the judge’s established power to differentiate in sentencing between the principal and his aiders and abettors. And to impute such a purpose to Congress would tend rather to defeat than to promote the objects of the legislation, because it would put pressure on the courts to define aiding and abetting very narrowly, as in United States v. Jones, 678 F.2d 102 (9th Cir.1982), in order to prevent section 848 from drawing within its deadly grasp all sorts of minor offenders. These include not only the policeman who takes one small bribe, but the landlord who leases space or the merchant who sells supplies to the kingpin knowing he is engaged in the narcotics business. These accomplices would be aiders and abettors of section 848 violations; for not being under the kingpin’s direction they would not be protected by the exception to aiding and abetting liability for those whom the kingpin employs or directs.
The point is not that such accomplices ought not be punishable by such severe penalties as are provided in section 848. That is not our business. These defendants, however, were not sentenced under section 848, and could not have been, because they were not found guilty of being drug kingpins. They were sentenced under the aiding and abetting statute. Our job is to mesh two statutes passed at different times and without express reference to each other. In attempting to mesh them we cannot ignore the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 103 S.Ct. 3001, 3009, 77 L.Ed.2d 637 (1983), “holdpng] as a matter of principle that a criminal sentence must be proportionate to the crime for which the defendant has been convicted” to pass constitutional muster under the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause. Although the Court in Solem said that reviewing courts “should grant substantial deference to the broad authority that legislatures necessarily possess in determining the types and limits of punishments for crime,” id., where as in the present case the legislature has not spoken clearly to the interrelation between two statutes we are not merely entitled, we are required, to consider the consequences for proportional punishment of alternative interpretations of the two statutes. If we hold that an aider and abettor of a section 848 violation is within the minimum-sentence provisions of that statute, even though he is sentenced under a different statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2, we shall create a situation where the statutory scheme requires disproportionate punishment. For there will then be cases where a kingpin’s own misconduct is not sufficiently egregious to earn him more than the minimum 10-year no-parole prison sentence and where the aider and abettor’s culpability is much less (maybe he was just a minor supplier of the kingpin) — yet the aider and abettor would have to be given the same sentence. We do not suggest — it is not argued — that Congress would violate the Eighth Amendment if it decreed that result; it is enough that we do not think it has decreed it.
Thus, although we agree with the government that the defendants can be punished as aiders and abettors of kingpins, we must remand for resentencing on this count so that the district judge can decide whether he wants to punish them as severely as he would have to do if they were the kingpins themselves. He may decide that the sentences he has given are appropriate and reimpose them; but alternatively he may decide that less severe sentences (shorter, or with provision for parole) would be appropriate. We express no view on what sentences he should impose. Although the penalties in section 848 are among the most severe known to modern federal law, the misconduct of these defendants was very grave, and we do not depreciate it. They were not, however, the kingpins; and we hold that in sentencing an aider and abettor the district judge is not bound by the minimum-sentence provisions in the kingpin statute. On remand he should indicate explicitly whether the sentences he imposes shall be subject to parole. We also accept the government’s confession of error with regard to the district judge’s action in sentencing the defendants both for aiding and abetting violations of 21 U.S.C. § 848 and for aiding and abetting violations of 21 U.S.C. § 846; section 846 is a lesser included offense of section 848. United States v. Jefferson, 714 F.2d 689, 705 (7th Cir.1983).
We move now to the defendants’ complaint that remarks made by the prosecutor (Mr. Webb, the United States Attorney) in closing argument regarding the possible consequences for the defendants if they were convicted of aiding and abetting a violation of the kingpin statute were misleading. During the course of the trial, for reasons of which the defendants do not complain, the prosecution had told the jury that the kingpin statute carried heavy mandatory minimum prison terms; and thereafter the defendants’ lawyer kept emphasizing this point to the jury in order to make the jury reluctant to convict. In closing argument, Webb, after telling the jury that the defendants were charged with aiding and abetting violations of the kingpin statute, added: “just so there’s no confusion, this is not a life and death struggle____ [T]o the extent that these lawyers try to tell you that the consequences — for example, his liberty is at stake — that’s just not true. I mean, if there is going to be punishment imposed, he [the district judge] will do that. But that’s not in issue.” If what Mr. Webb had meant, or had been understood to say, was that the defendants could not be sentenced to prison if they were convicted, this would have been a serious misstatement and might have required a curative instruction (which was not given) to avoid reversible error. Although sentencing is not the jury’s business, and in the normal course the jury is not even told what the range of possible sentences is, jurors have some sense of what are grave crimes, likely to be punishable by substantial prison sentences; and to be misinformed that what they thought was a serious crime was not punishable by imprisonment could lead them to resolve any reasonable doubts as to guilt against instead of in favor of the defendants. But the words “his liberty is [not] at stake” must not be read in isolation from the explanatory sentence that followed. When both sentences are read together, it seems that what Webb probably meant was that the jury wasn’t supposed to consider what the consequences of conviction might be for the defendants; that was the judge’s business. At least that is a possible reading; and though one would have had to hear the inflection with which Webb spoke to be sure what he meant, any doubt on that score must be resolved against the defendants. The able and experienced district judge had a big advantage over us, in actually hearing the words; and the gravity of the offenses with which the defendants were charged persuades us that he would have intervened if, as spoken, these words had conveyed the false impression that the defendants would not be punished with a loss of liberty if they were convicted.
We must also be wary of highlighting a few seconds in a trial that lasted three months. The jury had heard a great deal about the harsh minimum sentences for violators of federal narcotics laws; and while it is true that the prosecutor prefaced his comment about “liberty” with the remark that the defendants were being charged with aiding and abetting, we doubt that a jury would have inferred that the defendants were being charged with a minor crime. The entire emphasis of the prosecution was on the gravity of the defendants’ crimes as devoted protectors of large-scale drug racketeers; we do not think the word “liberty” was likely to have dispelled that impression.
The defendants were also convicted of extortion under the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951, and of violating RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968). The Hobbs Act makes “whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects [interstate] commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in [interstate] commerce” guilty of a crime. 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a); see 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(3). The defendants argue that the interstate commerce affected must be legal. Some legal interstate commerce was affected by the defendants’ extorting money from the drug dealers whom they protected — commerce in the quinine and other substances that are mixed with heroin and cocaine in preparing them for sale to the consumer. It is immaterial that the amount of commerce affected was small, either absolutely or relatively; $68 a month was held to be enough in United States v. Boulahanis, 677 F.2d 586, 589-90 (7th Cir. 1982), and the amount here was a lot more. The difference between this case and Boulahanis, however, is that here the lawful commerce was incidental to an unlawful activity, the sale of illegal narcotics; and it can be argued that anything that obstructs that commerce discourages the unlawful activity and is therefore a good thing. Moreover, most of the commerce affected by the defendants’ extortionate activity was itself illegal commerce, in narcotics; and again it can be argued that to burden an illegal interstate business is to promote the ultimate objectives of the Hobbs Act. Yet United States v. Hanigan, 681 F.2d 1127, 1131 (9th Cir.1982), held that the Hobbs Act does not require that the interstate commerce affected by a defendant’s extortionate activity be legal.
We think this holding is correct, at least in a case such as the present where the sums extorted are for protecting an illegal activity. Although the drug dealers paid the defendants substantial sums that, considered in isolation, increased the dealers’ costs of doing business, the dealers got in return something invaluable to them— police protection that enabled them to conduct their businesses on a far larger and presumably more profitable scale than would have been possible if they had lacked such assistance. The benefits to the illegal activity exceeded the costs, so that on balance the activity was promoted rather than retarded. The issue is therefore whether the Hobbs Act can reasonably be read to punish extortion that promotes illegal commerce as well as extortion that retards legal commerce. Although discouraging the latter type of extortion has been said to be the dominant purpose of the Act, see, e.g., Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 215, 80 S.Ct. 270, 272, 4 L.Ed.2d 252 (1960); United States v. Mattson, 671 F.2d 1020, 1023 (7th Cir.1982), discouraging the former is a complementary objective and one well within the Act’s language. Moreover, it would be unrealistic to suppose that all Congress cared about in passing the Hobbs Act was promoting trade among the states; common sense, with a little support in legislative history, suggests that interstate commerce was not merely the object of Congress’s solicitude but also a handle for enabling federal power to be brought to bear on criminal activities that, because of their multistate incidence, the states had difficulty controlling. See 91 Cong. Rec. 11909-10 (1945) (remarks of Chairman of House Judiciary Committee); cf. H.R.Rep. No. 1833, 73d Cong., 2d Sess. 2 (1934) (letter from Attorney General, concerning bill that became the Anti-Racketeering Act, the predecessor to the Hobbs Act). The extortion in this case is within the scope of intended prohibition.
The relevant provision of RICO, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c), makes it “unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise ... to conduct ... such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity____” The enterprise here is the Chicago Police Department (though it could just as well be the kingpins’ businesses); and the defendants argue that they cannot be guilty under this section because the “enterprise” did not benefit and because the defendants did not have a supervisory position in it. Both arguments were rejected in United States v. Kovic, 684 F.2d 512, 516-17 (7th Cir. 1982), another case of a corrupt Chicago policeman. To take over a legitimate enterprise and loot it through criminal activity that the statute defines as a pattern of racketeering is one of the forms of misconduct punishable under section 1962(c), see Sutliff, Inc. v. Donovan Cos., 727 F.2d 648, 653 (7th Cir.1984), and to use one’s position in the enterprise to line one’s pocket through a pattern of racketeering activity is so closely related as to be indistinguishable.
The defendants challenge their convictions on a number of other grounds besides those we have discussed, but the additional grounds have no possible merit and can thus be disposed of very briefly. There are complaints for example about the use, to impeach defendant Lowery, of a statement that he had given the FBI before trial. The defendants argue that the statement was within the scope of the request that they made before trial for the government’s evidence of guilt. But it was not used as evidence of guilt; it was used only for impeachment. The defendants (other than Lowery himself) argue that they should have been allowed to sever their trials from his, because the statement so damaged his credibility. But the fact that one codefendant may be less credible than another is not a ground for severance. They also argue that the statement implicated them (as it did, for in it Lowery said that he had seen some of the defendants taking money from drug dealers), as well as casting doubt on Lowery’s credibility, and thus that their right of confrontation was infringed since it was an out-of-court statement. But Lowery was there in court, available for cross-examination; thus, to the extent he was an adverse witness, they could confront him.
Defendant DeSimone, the only defendant who was not a member of the Tenth District Tactical Unit, argues that his trial should have been severed because he was less culpable than the other defendants. It is true that his involvement in the protection activities was less extensive than that of the other defendants, as he was not assigned full time to the Marquette district where the drug dealers had their operations. But the evidence of his guilt was clear, and it is most unlikely that the jury would have acquitted him had he been tried separately; but the cost of a separate trial would have been substantial. Cf. United States v. Shively, 715 F.2d 260, 267 (7th Cir.1983).
There is no merit to the argument that a new trial should have been granted because of newly discovered evidence consisting of proffered testimony of inmates that prosecution witnesses with whom they shared cells had admitted that they had lied in testifying for the government. The district judge conducted a hearing and satisfied himself that it was the newly discovered “evidence” that was false, not the evidence at trial. This was a perfectly reasonable conclusion, especially considering the source of the evidence. And “it [is] important for the orderly administration of criminal justice that findings on conflicting evidence by trial courts on motions for new trial based on newly discovered evidence remain undisturbed except for most extraordinary circumstances,” United States v. Johnson, 327 U.S. 106, 111, 66 S.Ct. 464, 466, 90 L.Ed. 562 (1946).
The district judge’s handling of the prejudiced-juror and pretrial-publicity issues was scrupulous, and entirely in accord with the applicable precedents. See, e.g., United States v. Wilson, 715 F.2d 1164, 1169 (7th Cir.1983); United States v. Read, 658 F.2d 1225, 1241 (7th Cir.1981). No other issues need be discussed. To summarize, the defendants’ convictions under 21 U.S.C. § 846 are vacated, their other convictions are affirmed, and the case is remanded for resentencing on all counts. See United States v. Harris, 729 F.2d 441, 449 (7th Cir.1984); United States v. Shively, supra, 715 F.2d at 269.
Affirmed in Part, Vacated in Part, and Remanded.