By Selim Algar, New York Post November 26, 2013
A Brooklyn jury found a former mob boss who federal prosecutors said ordered the 1997 hit on an NYPD officer who married his ex-wife not guilty.
It took only 4 ½ hours of deliberations for the jurors to find former Colombo consigliere Joel “Joe Waverly” Cacace not guilty of ordering the grisly hit on Police Officer Ralph Dols in Brooklyn. Now 72, the stone-faced Mafioso looked mildly pleased by the verdict and turned to give hearty hugs and kisses to his defense team while sullen government prosecutors looked on silently.
Jurors rejected testimony from two of Dols’ killers. They said Colombo captain Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli told them Cacace wanted the cop dead. “When you don’t have any evidence, a jury can tell,” said Cacace’s jubilant attorney.
The defense attorney painted the witnesses as soulless killers whose testimony had no value. She repeatedly referred to them as “maniacs,” “animals,” and “subhuman,” arguing that the killers were simply trying to soften their own looming sentences by taking down a mob whale for the government. Asked if her famously old-school client said anything after the verdict, – the attorney paused. “He’s not a talker,” she said.
Commentary: No surprise here. But before you think the defendant won because the witnesses were so unsavory and uncorroborated (although that should make a difference), lawyer Susan Kellman, who defended Cacace believes it was the snitches’ story themselves that did not hold up. Professor Dan Richman of Columbia University, a former prosecutor himself in the Southern District of New York, put it this way:
“I think the working assumption of good prosecutors is that it’s very risky to use a really bad guy – even if credible – against someone who’s not so bad or even of equal badness. So you would try to do without him unless his narrative was critical, which probably means not fully corroborated. But the risk can be mitigated by getting the jury to realize that the cooperator has been captured and dealt with and the defendant has yet to be. This is why the SDNY is so keen on cooperators pleading to everything and having massive sentencing exposure. And I don’t think the defense argument of “he’s as bad as me or worse” has ever gone far when the cooperator has been charged. The argument works only if the other guy has been treated in a way that minimizes culpability.”
The lesson here is that just knowing that your witnesses are bad guys is not enough to decide to go to trial, although in the case of paramilitary leaders there was a different consideration altogether. There was political component. The U.S. government would have never released debriefing statements from its witnesses, as it is required to, had the paramilitaries pressed to go to trial. Uncle Sam would have wanted to keep this highly sensitive information to itself and sensitive it was since these guys dealt with the power structure in Colombia. Knowledge is power so releasing it would not only undermine the power. It could de-stabilize the government. It is why I never understood why the paramilitaries went so quietly. And it is why the government offered the only paramilitary leader who insisted on going to trial a tenyear- old money laundering charge and what turned out to be a “time served” sentence. It was definitely the right move. The agents were not happy, but the agents did not have the same concerns as their bosses. The government did what was in the interest of the government to do.
But I digress. What you should understand is that the message is as important or more important than the messenger. Just because the snitch is the wrong guy he still could be delivering the right message. Don’t discount the message even if you discount the messenger.
But while you are never better than your evidence, you are never worse either. So don’t sell yourself too cheap.
– David Zapp