Friday,
July 27, 2007
Innocent Italian Americans Released from
Prison after 30 years, Four to Get $120 Million from US
The
ANNOTICO Report
A federal judge
held the FBI
"responsible for the framing of four innocent men" in a 1965 gangland
murder in a landmark ruling yesterday and ordered the
government to pay the men $101.7 million for the decades they spent in prison.
The award is believed to be the largest of its kind nationally.
US
District Judge Nancy Gertner said from the bench, that the FBI had
deliberately withheld evidence that Peter
J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo
were innocent, and that the bureau helped cover up the injustice for
decades as the men grew old behind bars and Tameleo and Greco died.
"FBI
officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and
ruin lives, said Gertner, berating the FBI for giving commendations and bonuses
to the agents who helped send the men to prison for the killing in Chelsea of
Edward "Teddy" Deegan, a small-time hoodlum.
As Limone, 73, of
"It was a
hard road," Limone said, recounting the 33 years and two months he spent
in prison while his four young children grew into adults with children of their
own. "They could never give me back what I lost. All the money in the world couldn't give me
33 years.
A federal judge
held the FBI "responsible for the framing of four innocent men" in a
1965 gangland murder in a landmark ruling yesterday and ordered the government
to pay the men $101.7 million for the decades they spent in prison. The award
is believed to be the largest of its kind nationally. (Additional sums were
payable to wives and children bringing the total to $120 million)
In a decision
that was as dramatic as it was stern, US District Judge Nancy Gertner said from
the bench that the FBI had deliberately withheld evidence that Peter J. Limone,
Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo were innocent, and that the
bureau helped cover up the injustice for decades as the men grew old behind
bars and Tameleo and Greco died.
"FBI
officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and
ruin lives, interrupted only with the occasional burst of applause," said
Gertner, berating the FBI for giving commendations and bonuses to the agents
who helped send the men to prison for the killing in Chelsea of Edward
"Teddy" Deegan, a small-time hoodlum.
As Limone, 73, of
"It was a
hard road," Limone said, recounting the 33 years and two months he spent
in prison while his four young children grew into adults with children of their
own. "They could never give me back what I lost. All the money in the
world couldn't give me 33 years."
Salvati said
after the proceeding that he only heard about half of the judge's 30-minute
ruling from the bench, because he went numb.
"The anger
is past," said Salvati, who spent 29 years and seven months in prison.
"You get emotional. You think about the past, and you've got to go on with
your life."
His wife, Marie,
who struggled to raise the couple's four children while making trips to prison
in vehicles that often broke down along the way, started crying outside the
courthouse and told reporters: "It was never about the money. It was about
proving his innocence. We got our good name back, for us and my children and my
grandchildren."
She said they
will use the money to send their grandchildren and great-grandchildren to
college.
"By any
measure, it is fair to call this record setting and unprecedented," said
David Yas, publisher of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. "Rarely do we see
verdicts approach $100 million, and for it to happen against the federal
government makes it even more unusual."
The FBI has never
apologized for the wrongful conviction of the four men. A spokeswoman for the
FBI in
A Justice
Department spokesman, Charles Miller, declined to comment on the ruling or to
say whether the government will appeal.
Lawyers for the
four men and their families said it would probably be about two years before
they collect any money, if the government appeals and loses.
Hours after
Gertner issued her ruling,
"This is
the kind of behavior that really undermines the confidence of the people and
the integrity of the FBI," Delahunt said.
Mueller
characterized the case as a debacle, and added: "I would suggest to you that
that is isolated. Day in and day out over the years, FBI agents have been
undertaking investigations and done them lawfully."
In a telephone
interview later, Delahunt said he plans to file a bill in the next few
months that would impose criminal sanctions against federal authorities who
fail to produce information or evidence that "implicates crimes of
violence."
"We can no
longer rely on guidelines," he said. "The failure to implement them
and comply with them has been extraordinary."
Gertner ordered
the government to pay $29 million to Salvati; $28 million to the estate of
Greco, who died in prison in 1995 at age 78, having served 28 years; $26
million to Limone; and $13 million to the estate of Tameleo, who died in 1985
at age 84 after serving 18 years in prison.
She awarded $1.05
million each to Salvati's wife, Marie; Limone's wife, Olympia; and the estate
of Tameleo's late wife, Giovannina "Jeannete," for loss of consortium
and intentional infliction of emotional distress; and $50,000 to Greco's former
wife, Roberta Werner, for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The nine children
of Limone, Salvati, and Greco, and the estate of Greco's son, Louis Jr., who
died in 1997, were each awarded $250,000 for loss of consortium and intentional
infliction of emotional distress. Tameleo's son, Saverio "Edward"
Tameleo, who was an adult when his father was convicted, was awarded $50,000
for emotional distress.
"Sadly when
law enforcement perverts its mission, the criminal justice system does not
easily self-correct," Gertner said. "We understand that our system
makes mistakes; we have appeals to address them. But this case goes beyond
mistakes, beyond unavoidable errors of a fallible system."
She added, "This
case is about intentional misconduct, subornation of perjury, conspiracy, the
framing of innocent men."
Later in the day,
Gertner released a 223-page decision detailing her findings. She found
that the government, which was sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act, was
liable for the malicious prosecution of the four men, civil conspiracy,
intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence.
After all four
men were convicted July 31, 1968, of Deegan's slaying, Greco, Limone, and
Tameleo were sentenced to die in the electric chair. Their sentences were later
reduced to life in prison after
The discovery of
secret FBI files that were never turned over during the men's trial prompted a
state judge six years ago to overturn the murder convictions of Limone, who was
immediately freed from prison, and Salvati, who was paroled in 1997.
The documents showed
the FBI knew that the key witness in the case, notorious hit man Joseph
"The Animal" Barboza, may have falsely implicated the four men while
protecting one of Deegan's true killers, Vincent "Jimmy" Flemmi, who
was an FBI informant.
Barboza had
testified that Limone, a reputed leader in the Boston mob, had offered him
$7,500 to kill Deegan and that Tameleo, the reputed consigliere of the New
England Mafia, sanctioned the hit. He also testified that Greco and Salvati,
who had prior run-ins with Barboza but weren't alleged to be members of the
mob, were involved in ambushing Deegan.
Gertner, who
heard testimony during 22 days of trial that ended in February and waded
through thousands of documents, found there was overwhelming evidence that
the FBI knew Barboza was lying, yet assured state prosecutors that his story
"checked out."
Gertner found
that the FBI protected Barboza and Flemmi because both provided valuable
information against the mob and that the four wrongly convicted men were
"collateral damage" in the war against La Cosa Nostra, more
commonly known as the Mafia.
"To the FBI,
the plaintiffs' lives, and those of their families, just did not matter,"
Gertner said.
During the civil
trial before Gertner, Justice Department lawyers argued that the FBI had no
duty to share internal documents with state prosecutors and insist ed the state
was responsible for the prosecution of the four men.
The government
argued that the FBI exercised its discretion when it offered Barboza leniency
in exchange for his cooperation, then turned him over to state authorities, who
independently prosecuted the four men.
But Gertner
called the government's position absurd and said "the issue here is not
discretion but abuse."
The judge said
that the FBI developed Barboza as a witness and turned him over to the
state, without disclosing the agency's documents that indicated he was lying.
Gertner also
pointed out that two FBI agents testified at the trial, one of whom who
vouched for the "purity" of testimony by Barboza.
Juliane Balliro, [of the Firm:, Wolf,
Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen] one of the lawyers representing the Limones and
Tameleos, said the families will be required by law to pay taxes on the money.
She said she believes Gertner's award was the largest single judgment against
the FBI or any other federal or state law enforcement agency for wrongful
imprisonment.
But "these
facts are so outrageous, their conduct was so egregious that it required a
level of damages that was commensurate with the facts," she said.
Medford lawyer Victor
J. Garo, who represents Salvati and was credited by Gertner with helping
expose the FBI's wrongdoing, said, "This is the worst I have ever seen law enforcement officials
behave, and this is the clearest I've ever seen them get
caught at what they were doing."
Greco's son,
Edward, now 50 and living in a New Orleans nursing home while recovering from
lung cancer, said by phone that his father, a decorated World War II veteran,
"loved his country, and he always thought this would come out before he
died.
"I'm just so
glad that he was vindicated," he said.
Greco, whose
life spiraled downhill after his father went to prison when he was 10 and his
mother sank into a depression and abandoned him, said that if he ever collects
the money awarded to him, he would like to use it to start a reading program
for minority children in
Greco's former
wife, Roberta Werner, reached by phone in
Tameleo's son,
Saverio "Edward" Tamelo, was too ill to make the trip to court
yesterday from the
"I used to
go visit my grandfather" in prison," Henry Tameleo said.
"He used to
say, 'This is wrong. I don't understand.' And all he did was keep fighting and
fighting. . . . Most of the family is not here to see this and hear this."
Just after Gertner
left the bench, and the wrongly convicted men hugged their families and
lawyers, Limone walked over to shake Tameleo's hand and, smiling broadly, said,
"I told your grandfather we'd beat them."
Innocent
Italian Americans released from prison after 30 years
TV3 News -
Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:06a.m.
Four
Italian Americans who sued the
The
four spent more than 30 years in prison for a mafia murder they did not commit,
because the FBI withheld evidence from their trial that would have
proved they were innocent.
Only
two of the men are still alive, the other two died in prison, and the damages
will go their families.
Lawyer
Juliane Balliro says the surviving pair can start a new life.
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