New York Daily News
BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, July 1st, 2006
Despite having murdered, maimed and sold out informants to blood-thirsty mobsters, the Mafia cops’ racketeering conviction was stunningly overturned yesterday – all because they apparently steered clear of the mob for the last five years.
The ruling left prosecutors and victims’ relatives speechless, and even seemed to surprise allies of ex-NYPD Detectives Louis Eppolito. and Stephen Caracappa.
Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein acknowledged there was no doubt the disgraced duo were hit men for the mob – guilty of being the most corrupt cops in NYPD history.
Yet he still threw out the convictions, which carried life sentences, on a technicality.
“The evidence at trial overwhelmingly established the defendants’ participation in a large number of heinous and violent crimes,” Weinstein, 84, wrote.
“Nevertheless . . . the five-year statute of limitations mandates granting the defendants a judgment of acquittal on the key charge against them: racketeering conspiracy,” a decision that the judge admitted would appear “peculiar to many people.”
Federal prosecutors vowed to appeal the ruling; Weinstein indicated that if he is reversed, the Mafia cops will begin their life sentences immediately.
For now, they will remain behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until Weinstein hears a likely bail application, sometime after he returns from vacation July 21.
Eppolito’s new lawyer, Joseph Bondy, broke the staggering news to his client at the jail last night.
Bondy said a weeping Eppolito embraced him and said, “I feel as though my prayers were answered and that God is my true judge. I was afraid that I was going to spend the rest of my life in jail.”
Eppolito told Bondy he would tell Caracappa what happened when he got back to the cell they share. Caracappa’s lawyer isn’t scheduled to see him until today.
A federal jury in April convicted Eppolito, 57, and Caracappa, 64, of participating in eight gangland murders.
The racketeering indictment charged that Eppolito and Caracappa. went on the payroll of the Luchese crime family in the 1980s in Brooklyn. It specified that the duo committed or helped commit the slayings between 1986 and 1990.
Despite a lull in their criminal activity in the late 1990s, their criminal enterprise resumed last year in Las Vegas, where they had settled after their retirement, the indictment charged.
The ex-cops’ new legal team sought to overturn the verdict on two fronts: poor legal representation and the five-year statute of limitations.
Prosecutors seemed unprepared for Weinstein’s ruling – and perhaps with good reason.
Earlier this month, Weinstein left no doubt at a sentencing hearing that he was convinced of both defendants’ guilt. Then, last week, after Eppolito testified at a hearing for a new trial, the judge called him an immoral liar.
But Weinstein warned prosecutors on multiple occasions that he had serious misgivings about their theory connecting the Mafia cops’ criminal activities in Brooklyn to their money laundering and drug crimes in Las Vegas.
Prosecutors noted yesterday that the jurors “specifically found that the defendants’ heinous crimes were committed within the statute of limitations,” according to a statement from Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf.
But Weinstein concluded that the conspiracy ended when both detectives retired from the force.
The decision was vindication of sorts for the original defense attorneys, Bruce Cutler and Edward Hayes, who were blamed by their clients for the conviction.
“I’m happy that we have a courageous Judge Weinstein to do the right thing,” Cutler said last night.
And in their exclusive gated community in Las Vegas, neighbors and friends crowded Caracappa’s home to watch news reports of the legal victory on CNN.
“I know my husband will be unhappy that he’s exonerated on a technicality,” said Caracappa’s wife, Monica. “But I will take my husband home any way I can.”
Across the street, Fran Eppolito said she was “overjoyed” by the decision, though mindful the case is far from over. “I am very hopeful now, the most hopeful I’ve been in a long time. I just hope this works out in Lou’s favor.”
Eppolito and Caracappa had been suspected of being mob hit men since former Luchese underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso ratted them out in 1994, revealing they had been leaking secret information to him for years.
Casso self-destructed as a witness, and it took authorities 10 years to flip jailed Luchese associate and Mafia cops go-between Burton Kaplan. The feds, rather than the Brooklyn district attorney, prosecuted the case because the rules of evidence would permit uncorroborated testimony by Kaplan. and other cooperating witnesses.
Brooklyn prosecutors now will await the U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision before deciding whether to pursue state murder charges against the Mafia cops, said spokesman Jerry Schmetterer.
If Weinstein had dismissed the racketeering conspiracy charge before the verdict, the government would not be able to appeal, sources said..
