New York Daily News
BY JONATHAN LEMIRE and ADAM LISBERG
Sunday, July 2nd, 2006
Jurors who found the Mafia cops guilty three months ago told the Daily News yesterday they were shocked that the judge threw out their verdict on a technicality.
“It was like a slap in the face. I don’t think 12 people could not understand the letter of the law,” said one juror, a 50-year-old Long Island man. “These guys may just get off, from the way it looks. And the thing is, they did it. They did it!”
Disgraced detectives Stephen Caracappa, 64, and Louis Eppolito, 57, got life sentences after the jury found them guilty of being hit men for the Luchese crime family – but Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein threw out the verdict Friday.
“I feel like with the information we had, we did what we thought was right,” said another Long Island juror, a 63-year-old man. “He did what he thought he had to do, and that’s his decision.”
To win a conspiracy conviction within the five-year statute of limitations, prosecutors tried to show the two men kept breaking the law by dealing drugs after they retired to Las Vegas. Weinstein said prosecutors stretched the idea of a conspiracy too far – but jurors said they wrestled with that question for hours before reaching the opposite conclusion.
“I know we didn’t misunderstand it. The conspiracy went on,” the 50-year-old said. “If they can’t get a conviction on that, I give up on the justice system.”
Added the 63-year-old juror: “I don’t know why they waited until the statute was up before they brought \[charges\], but we figured they got it in under the wire.”
The jurors sat as an anonymous panel through three weeks of testimony before making their decision after just 10 hours of deliberations. Yesterday, they all requested that their names not be printed before they would talk about the ruling.
“\[Weinstein is\] a very smart man, but I’m a little confused about it – a little upset about it,” said a 60-year-old alternate juror from Long Island who attended the entire trial but did not vote on the verdict. “We should have probably known upfront that this was going to happen if this was a problem.”
Weinstein said last week there was no doubt the cops were killers, and rejected .requests for new trials because of allegedly bad work by their lawyers. But he had earlier expressed strong reservations about the statute of limitations issue, even urging feds last August to scrap the racketeering case and charge the ex-cops with murder-for-hire on .behalf of the mob.
Because he waited until after the verdict to issue his ruling, prosecutors can appeal it – and they say they will.
“There was a conspiracy here. There was a conspiracy even when these guys left the force,” insisted the 50-year-old. “That was the first thing we hit head-on \[in deliberations\].”
Caracappa received details of the stunning news yesterday .behind bars at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where he shares a cell with .Eppolito. “Mr. Caracappa is a realistic man,” said Dan Noble, his new lawyer. “Obviously he’s pleased with the decision, but this is just one stage along the way.”.
