Orena v. U.S.
| Decision Date | 10 March 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 92 CR 351.,No. 96 CV 1474.,No. 96 CV 1461.,96 CV 1474.,92 CR 351.,96 CV 1461. |
| Citation | 956 F.Supp. 1071 |
| Parties | Victor J. ORENA, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent. Pasquale AMATO, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York |
Zachary Carter, United States Attorney by Andrew Weissman, Valerie Caproni, George Stamboulidis, Brooklyn, NY, for the Government.
Gerald L. Shargel, Alan S. Futerfas, New York City, for Defendant Victor J. Orena.
Benjamin Brafman, New York City, for Defendant Pasquale Amato.
I INTRODUCTION
These are disturbing cases. On the facts and the law, a decision for either side might be justified. After extended evidentiary hearings, briefings, argument and introspection, the court concludes that the defendants should be denied new trials.
Defendants were proven by strong evidence to be murderous criminals. The jury found them guilty in separate trials — Orena in 1992 and Amato in 1993. Their offenses were committed while they were conducting the affairs, and later warring over control, of the Colombo organized crime family. Both were sentenced to life in prison and stripped of their worldly goods. The Court of Appeals affirmed. United States v. Sessa, 821 F.Supp. 870 (E.D.N.Y.1993), affirmed sub nom, United States v. Amato, 15 F.3d 230 (2d. Cir.1994) and United States v. Orena, 32 F.3d 704 (2d Cir.1994).
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 pursuant to Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and section 2255 of Title 28 of the United States Code. The claim is that the government violated its disclosure obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) and Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995), after engaging in and covering up outrageous government misconduct.
Orena and Amato contend that it was not they — the convicted criminals — but ex-F.B.I. Special Agent, R. Lindley DeVecchio, who conspired with one of the defendants' associates — the murderer Gregory Scarpa — to cause the killing of their partner and loanshark, Thomas Ocera, and to instigate an internecine mafia war. The evidence to prove this bizarre, but not entirely implausible, contention, defendants argue, should have been supplied to defense counsel so that they could rely on the jurors' rationality or befuddlement (they claim either provides a justifiable basis for reasonable doubt) to achieve a verdict of not guilty, or at least disagreement sufficient for a mistrial.
Scarpa has died in prison and can provide no help on the facts. DeVecchio, having been allowed to resign from the F.B.I. without explaining what happened, pleaded his Fifth Amendment privilege. While he remained silent in court at the earlier hearings and throughout his interminably delayed administrative and professional responsibility proceedings, he spoke freely to the media, apparently uninhibited by fear of cross-examination under oath. See, e.g., Frederic Dannen, The G-Man and the Hit Man, The New Yorker, Dec. 16, 1996, at 68. Finally, when the court indicated it would draw inferences adverse to the government from DeVecchio's silence, see infra section IV(A), he was granted immunity, all documents relevant to his background were revealed, and he was subjected to fierce examination by defense counsel.
Despite the seamy aspects of law enforcement revealed by the record, for the reasons indicated below, defendants' factual assumptions and legal theories are unpersuasive. Their motions should be denied and their petitions dismissed.
The Colombo Family is one of metropolitan New York's five major organized criminal groups that together constitute our local Mafia. Others are the Bonnano, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese Families. For a description of the role and history of these mobs in New York City see, e.g., United States v. Sessa, 821 F.Supp. 870, 871-73 (E.D.N.Y.1993), affirmed, United States v. Orena, 32 F.3d 704(2d Cir.1994).
With the exception of the Ocera murder, charges in the two instant cases arose primarily out of incidents connected to a deadly struggle for power between two Colombo factions — the Persicos and the Orenas — that began in the autumn of 1991 and lasted through the spring of 1992. The "Colombo War" left ten people dead and another fourteen wounded.
Over the course of this fratricidal bloodletting the F.B.I., with the aid of the New York City Police Department, made 123 arrests of Colombo Family members. By September 1992, twenty-four of the fifty-four arrested were Persicos. All told, by War's end, sixty-one of those arrested were on the Orena side; sixty were on the Persico side, which was one-third the size of its rival faction.
In an effort to slow what was proving to be a particularly bloody struggle, the F.B.I. focused on stopping hit teams before they engaged in shooting. See United States v. Scopo, 19 F.3d 777, 779 (2d Cir.1994). As a result, thirty-five of the first thirty-seven arrests were for possession of firearms. Over 100 guns were seized during the course of the fray. Safehouses on both sides were surveilled and searched. Bugs and videotapes were installed in cars and elsewhere to gather evidence. A video-surveillance device and a bug were even installed at the United States prison facility at Lompoc, California to eavesdrop on jailed Colombo Boss Carmine Persico's strategizing. Special Agent DeVecchio, supervisor of an F.B.I. squad charged with investigating and surveilling the Colombos, oversaw and approved many of the F.B.I.'s activities investigating and hindering the warfare.
In spite of the high casualty rate the F.B.I. must be credited with keeping the Colombo War...
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