Deal With the Devil: The FBI's Secret Thirty-Year Relationship With a Mafia Killer by Peter Lance

Author:Peter Lance
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, True Crime, General, Criminals & Outlaws, Organized Crime
ISBN: 9780062248893
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-07-02T07:20:23+00:00

The Isolated Jury

Given the Feds’ willingness to link Greg Scarpa Sr. to the stalking of Tommy Ocera, one of the most compelling revelations from the Vic Orena trial is how they isolated the jury from any suggestion that the Killing Machine was a Top Echelon source.

In recounting the war violence, AUSA George Stamboulidis told the jury, “On January seventh of 1992 . . . the Persicos kill Nicky Black.”31 Minutes later, he reiterated, after earlier testimony, that on “February twenty-sixth, Joe Waverly—Joel Cacace—was . . . shot and wounded.” To remind the jury that it was Vic Orena who was on trial, he added that Cacace “was an Orena faction member.”32 But Stamboulidis never let on what he should have known at the time: that both acts of violence were committed by Gregory Scarpa Sr., the man who effectively was the “Persico faction.”

Judge Jack B. Weinstein, who was on the bench for both the Sessa and Orena trials, issued a number of rulings during Orena’s prosecution and motions for a new trial that seemed to favor the prosecution.33

In the absence of any physical evidence linking him to Ocera’s murder, Vic Orena was convicted and sentenced to multiple life terms by Judge Weinstein—largely on the weight of hearsay evidence, which also sought to cast Orena as the lead protagonist in the war. The government’s star witnesses, Little Al D’Arco and Sammy the Bull Gravano, also testified about Orena’s alleged admissions regarding Ocera’s death, which were entirely hearsay—and each of them was later proven to be to be a liar. Further, the government’s theory that Orena killed Ocera as a favor to John Gotti was entirely discredited.34

In 1997, lawyers for Vic Orena and Patty Amato petitioned for new trials in light of these revelations and the evidence that had surfaced since their convictions establishing Greg Scarpa Sr. as the primary instigator of the war. Judge Weinstein issued a 101-page decision rejecting those motions. Calling Orena and Amato “murderous criminals” who’d been convicted on “strong evidence,” he wrote:

Attempting to transform a troubling cloud of questionable ethics and judgment enveloping an F.B.I. Special Agent into a raging storm of reasonable doubt, petitioner-defendants move for dismissal of their indictments or for new trials. . . . The claim is that the government violated its disclosure obligations under Brady v. Maryland, after engaging in and covering up outrageous government misconduct.35

In that decision, Judge Weinstein acknowledged Orena’s claim that “Gravano’s testimony in another case, United States v. Stancell, 95 CR 503 (N.D.Ga.1996), constitutes newly discovered evidence that contradicts his and D’Arco’s testimony, as well as the government’s argument, at the Orena trial, that Orena’s primary motive to kill Ocera was to please Gotti by retaliating for Ocera’s murder of Greg Reiter.”

Then he went further:

During the Stancell proceedings and outside of the jury’s presence, Gravano testified that the Ocera homicide had no connection to Greg Reiter’s disappearance and murder. . . . Orena then points to another case, United States v. Brennan, 95 CR 941[,] . . .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.