{"id":341,"date":"2006-07-26T01:44:29","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T01:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.israelgreenwald.com\/?p=341"},"modified":"2015-03-13T01:44:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T01:44:40","slug":"bail-denied-for-mafia-cops-facing-trial-in-drug-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/?p=341","title":{"rendered":"Bail Denied for \u2018Mafia Cops\u2019 Facing Trial in Drug Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 26, 2006
\n\"nytimes-2\"<\/a>
\nBy ALAN FEUER<\/p>\n

Less than a month after he acquitted them of one of the most scandalous murder conspiracies in New York history, a federal judge denied bail yesterday to the two retired detectives in the so-called Mafia Cops case on a much less solemn charge: a plot to distribute less than one ounce of methamphetamine.<\/p>\n

The drug charge was one of only two counts left from the original indictment of the men, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who were found guilty on April 6 of taking part in at least eight murders for the Luchese crime family. On June 30, the verdict was reversed when the judge in the case, Jack B. Weinstein, ruled that the statute of limitations \u2014 five years for conspiracy charges \u2014 had run out.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, after he denied the two men bail in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, Judge Weinstein took them to task, as he did in his order of acquittal, calling them \u201cdangerous criminals with no degree of credibility\u201d and saying they had been \u201cpublicly shamed\u201d at the very trial he had upended by tossing their convictions out. He said the drug charge \u2014 an alleged deal hatched over dinner in Las Vegas \u2014 was a \u201cserious\u201d charge and sternly ordered the federal marshals to haul the men back to jail.<\/p>\n

Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa now inhabit a strange piece of legal real estate, one that might be labeled \u201cguilty but acquitted.\u201d Both judge and jury in the case have found that there was ample \u2014 even overwhelming \u2014 evidence that the former lawmen committed some of the worst crimes of corruption since 1912, when a police lieutenant, Charles Becker, was charged with (and later executed for) the murder of a two-bit gambler named Herman \u201cBeansie\u201d Rosenthal. Despite such evidence, however, the murder charges against Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa were effectively dismissed.<\/p>\n

Although the government has said it will appeal Judge Weinstein\u2019s order of acquittal, the judge himself said yesterday that his decision to deny bail had nothing to do with the appellate case and was based solely on the fact that the two men still have charges pending against them: the drug count (for both) and a count of money-laundering (for Mr. Eppolito alone). The government has said it will try the two men on the drug charge in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, though only after the broader appeal has been decided in a proceeding that could take months.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa will return to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where they have been sharing a cell since their April convictions. Daniel Nobel, Mr. Caracappa\u2019s lawyer, asked Judge Weinstein if his client might be moved to a different jail, later saying: \u201cI dare say most marriages would founder under similar circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were many reasons Judge Weinstein could have granted bail, as he had done before the trial began. At that point, the two men faced a damaging array of charges, now dismissed. Moreover, at the first bail hearing, last July, the government itself had said that there was no \u201cpresumption\u201d that the two detectives should be held on the methamphetamine charge.<\/p>\n

Mr. Nobel and Joseph Bondy, Mr. Eppolito\u2019s lawyer, said they were likely to appeal the judge\u2019s ruling on denying bail to a higher court. Mr. Bondy, in particular, said he thought Judge Weinstein may have kept the men in jail as a way to offset their acquittals on what some saw as a technicality in the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there may have been a balancing aspect to the judge\u2019s decision,\u201d he said. \u201cPerhaps from the judge\u2019s point of view letting them go may have been inconsistent with his role pending a retrial.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the arguments the prosecution raised against bail yesterday was a concern that if the men were freed, they might be tempted to threaten witnesses in the case. After all, having sat through an entire trial, they now know each witness by name.<\/p>\n

In court papers filed last week, the prosecution mentioned one witness in particular, Steven Corso, a disgraced accountant, who testified at trial that in February 2005, Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa agreed to help him find some methamphetamine for some \u201cHollywood punks\u201d who were coming to Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith their liberty at stake, the defendants have a tremendous incentive to attempt to harm Corso to prevent him from testifying against them,\u201d the prosecution contends in court papers.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Mr. Corso himself sounded only marginally worried when he called The New York Times last month to discuss the outcome of the trial.<\/p>\n

Although he said there were times that \u201che was looking out for bullets,\u201d his main concern seemed to be the paper\u2019s coverage \u2014 of himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 26, 2006 By ALAN FEUER Less than a month after he acquitted them of one of the most scandalous murder conspiracies in New York history, a federal judge denied […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-from-april-2006-dec-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}