Forget It, Jake; It's Chinatown

When Wheatley is meeting with Assistant US Attorney Baldi in an attempt to get a plea bargain he names off one of his associates, Masanori Watanabe. Upon hearing his name AUSA Baldi whispers "Yamaguchi-gumi" to his assistant. The Yamaguchi-gumi are the largest member of the Japanese Yakuza, which is Japan's largest and most powerful crime syndicate. The Yamaguchi are one of the largest criminal organizations in the world, with a reported 8,200 active members. They are also ranked among the world's wealthiest gangsters, making billions of dollars a year from extortion, gambling, prostitution, sex trafficking (especially trafficking underage Japanese girls), arms trafficking, the import and export of drugs, especially the export of raw opium to be made into heroin. They also have experience with stock market manipulation and are one of the world's largest producers of internet child pornography.

As Wheatley hired someone to kill Kathy Stabler, murder for profit, he should be charged with murder in the first degree, not second degree murder.

References Chinatown (1974)