Thursday, 4:30 PM
Government accepts no blame for wrongful convictions in 1965 mob slaying
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff
A Justice Department lawyer argued today that the FBI had no duty to share internal documents that may have helped four men prove they were innocent of a 1965 gangland slaying and insisted the government can't be blamed for the state's wrongful conviction of Joseph Salvati, Peter J. Limone, Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco.
"The United States is not liable to plaintiffs because they were convicted as a result of a state prosecution,'' said Justice Department attorney Bridget Bailey Lipscomb. "The FBI did not initiate this prosecution and there is no duty of the FBI to submit to state or local governments any of its internal files.''
US District Judge Nancy Gertner noted that the state had been unable to solve the 1965 slaying of Edward "Teddy'' Deegan in a Chelsea alley until FBI agents recruited Joseph "The Animal" Barboza as a witness and turned him over to state officials to testify against the four men. She also noted that FBI agents had interviewed Barboza 34 times before he testified before the state grand jury and knew he had vowed not to implicate one of his friends, who was a suspect in the slaying and was also an FBI informant.
Lipscomb said there was no evidence that the FBI agents "were even paying attention" to what was happening in the Deegan case.
But lawyers for the four men argued that FBI agents who recruited Barboza engaged in obstruction of justice and supported perjury by turning Barboza over to the state while knowing they had evidence in their own files that he was lying.
Boston lawyer Michael Avery said Boston FBI agents knew that FBI Barboza lied when he named the four men as Deegan's killers and his clients were "acceptable collateral damage" in the agency's Mob crackdown.
"The notion that the FBI is not responsible for the initiation of this prosecution... is frivolous," Avery said.
The courtroom was packed with families and friends of Salvati and Limone. Both men are here with their wives and children.
Also present were three congressman who sat on a congressional committee that conducted a two-year investigation into the FBI's mishandling of informants and focused on the Salvati case: Indiana Republican Dan Burton, who previously chaired the committee; William Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat; and Stephen F. Lynch, a South Boston Democrat.
Burton, who arrived on a red-eye flight from California this morning, said that after reviewing all of the evidence he "became absolutely convinced that it was a horrible miscarriage of justice for Joe Salvati to be convicted of the Deegan murder. I believe he deserves restitution for the 30 years he spent away from his family. I think justice requires he get compensation."
He said he believes all four men were wrongly convicted, but noted the committee had focused mostly on Salvati.
Delahunt said he came to listen to closing arguments "to express to the families our sorrow for what they have had to go through all of these years because of a failure of their government."
Lynch, who was a member of the congressional committee that investigated the FBI's role in the case, said, "It's important for moral support for the families to be here and important to shine the light on the case."
He added that the government can never adequately compensate the men for the decades they spent in prison, but "we can give them as much justice as we can."
Associated Press contributed to this story.
