Family Secrets Mob Trial Convictions Upheld

An appeals court has upheld the convictions of several reputed mobsters in a landmark trial credited with delivering a body blow to Chicago's mob. But Tuesday's opinion cited at least one trial error. And a dissenting judge argued two defendants' convictions should have been reversed.

The defense asked the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals for a do-over of the 2007 Family Secrets trial. Their grounds included that Judge James Zagel talked to a panelist privately who told him she felt threatened. He later dismissed her.

The court said Zagel should have told attorneys about the comment but found the error was harmless.

Dissenting in part, Judge Diane Wood said she would have overturned Frank Calabresse, Sr., and James Marcello's convictions on grounds they'd been tried previously for the same crimes.

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Mob Wives Chicago Video Promo

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Does Big Government Choose Your News?

Corydon B. Dunham’s “Government Control of News” study was expanded and developed for the Corydon B. Dunham Fellowship for the First Amendment at Harvard Law School. Dunham was an NBC legal executive from 1965 to 1990.

A proposed new plan for government control of television news, and perhaps Internet news, is now pending before the Federal Communications Commission. It would enable the government to suppress opposing points of view, reduce diversity and chill speech.

The new Localism, Balance and Diversity Doctrine has much in common with the FCC’s old Fairness Doctrine – a policy the agency itself found deterred and suppressed news and chilled speech and which it revoked in 1987. An FCC-sponsored Future of Media Study has recommended that the Localism Doctrine proceeding be ended as ill advised but FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has refused; the administrator of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass R. Sunstein, has long recommended that the government regulate news content broadcast by stations to advance the incumbent government’s political and social objectives.

The new doctrine would suppress news, impose unnecessary and heavy burdens on television station news and be enforced by threats of license termination from both the FCC and a local control board at each station. Under the proposed plan, news broadcast by television stations would have to satisfy government criteria for “localism” in production and news coverage – as well as government criteria for balance and viewpoint diversity.

Internet news sites stand to be affected as well. The FCC is planning to transfer the broadcast spectrum used by local television to the Internet and the agency already has begun regulating the Internet.

Five federal communications commissioners in a central government agency in Washington, D.C., would review local news. The majority vote of three commissioners appointed by the president would make a final determination of news acceptability, overriding the news judgments of thousands of independent, local TV reporters and editors. The stations would be threatened with loss of their licenses to broadcast if found to be non-compliant.

In addition, a local control board would be appointed for each television station to monitor its programming, including news, and recommend against license renewal if board members concluded the station is not complying with the FCC policy. This would impose a new blanket of government control over news. Much of the proposed new rule has not been made public including, for example, who would appoint the members of the local boards.

Requiring journalists to comply with a central government agency’s policy on how to report the news and what the news should be means those journalists would no longer be free and independent of government. If the broadcast press is not free and independent, it cannot act as a watchdog for the public, which is its constitutional role.

News gathering is not just taking government handouts; it’s probing sources for what is really going on. It’s important that the TV and radio press continue to be able to do that so the public will be informed. FCC history shows government regulation of news content deters and prevents effective news-gathering.

Corydon B. Dunham is a Harvard Law School graduate. His new book, “Government Control of News: A Constitutional Challenge", details the study tracing the history of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine and development of the Localism, Balance and Diversity Doctrine. As an NBC executive for 25 years, Dunham oversaw legal and government matters and Broadcast Standards. He served on the board of directors of the National Television Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Corporate Counsel Association.

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Attorney Joseph R. Lopez, "The Shark", Brings Trial Winning Streak to Drew Peterson Case & Closing Argument

The criminal defense attorney who will deliver the closing argument when Drew Peterson goes on trial is on a roll, having won all three of his most his most recent jury trials, including two where his clients were charged with murder.

Attorney Joseph R. Lopez is best known for representing members of the Chicago Outfit. When Lopez was growing up in Chicago’s Little Italy neighborhood, he was given the nickname “the Shark.”

Lead Peterson defense attorney Joel Brodsky tapped Lopez to join the defense team because of his skills and success at delivering closing arguments.

“I chose Joe because he is good at what he does,” says Brodsky. “It wasn’t a stroke of genius. It is about assembling a winning team and Joe’s track record reinforces to me that I made the right decision in giving him the closing argument.”

Two of Lopez’s recent cases were murder trials. The third involved accusations of armed robbery and extortion. Lopez delivered closing arguments in all three cases and all three defendants were found not guilty.

The closing argument is the final argument made by an attorney during a trial. It represents a summation of the evidence. Closing arguments are the last chance to talk to the jury and impact their decisions. And the closing argument is considered within the legal community to be an art form of sorts.

“The closing argument is one of the most important parts of a trial, as the entire trial leads up to the summation. The argument is especially significant if the outcome of the trial is too close to predict,” according to the website caught.net. “At that point, all that matters is the attorney’s last minute attempt to persuade the jury to find in favor of his or her client.”

Peterson is charged with murder in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Her death originally was ruled an accidental drowning but authorities later determined it to be a homicide that was staged to look like an accident. Peterson vehemently denies any connection to Savio’s death.

Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacey, disappeared several years ago and though a suspect, he has not been charged in connection with that case.

Last week an appellate court ruled that hearsay evidence would be allowed to be presented at trial, which means two of Peterson’ ex-wives will likely “testify” during the trial even though one is dead and the other is missing. 

Peterson has been in jail since May 2009 since police arrested and charged him.

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Did The Vatican Cover-up a Child Kidnapping & Murder Due to Mafia Ties?

The faint smell of incense and candle wax permeates the church of Sant’Apollinare near Rome’s famous Piazza Navona. The basilica is one of a handful of churches outside the walls of Vatican City owned by the Holy See.  It is used primarily by members of the ultra-conservative Opus Dei prelature for special masses for student priests and for celebrations of marriage and baptism of those affiliated with the sect. Behind a side door near the back of the basilica is a small courtyard that’s closed to the public. There, in an external crypt near the ornate sarcophaguses of bishops and cardinals, is the curious tomb of Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis, a prominent member of the infamous Magliana organized-crime gang who was ambushed and murdered by rival gang members in 1990.

Why a known-mobster like De Pedis is buried on the grounds of a Vatican church has been the object of much speculation since 1997, when a church maid revealed the tomb’s existence to an inquisitive journalist. The Vatican was always cagey about why the mobster was buried in one of its churches, and ultimately, the church’s silence spurred countless conspiracy theories.  Now, thanks to shocking Vatican letters leaked in the Vatileaks scandal that is rocking the Holy See, the Italian police are less interested in why he’s buried there. Instead, they want to open the tomb to see if the remains of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi are interred with those of the mobster.

Orlandi was the daughter of a prominent non-clerical Vatican employee who worked in the Vatican’s special events office that organizes papal functions and Catholic celebrations. She disappeared without a trace after leaving her Vatican apartment for music lessons on the afternoon of June 22, 1983. Her lessons were in a music school adjacent to Sant’Apollinare church, and the last witnesses to see her alive told investigators the girl crawled into a dark green BMW, though that lead could never be corroborated. Her disappearance came at a tense moment for the Vatican, and nearly everyone associated her presumed kidnapping with a wider scandal.  In 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot Pope John Paul II, nearly killing him. Orlandi’s parents received a series of phone calls from thugs who said they would give back their daughter if the Vatican released Ali Agca. The calls soon stopped and the Orlandi family was left wondering if their daughter was alive or dead.

Another theory surfaced a year later, when an unidentifed tipster told police Orlandi was kidnapped to keep her father quiet. Mr. Orlandi, it was said, had stumbled upon sensitive documents that tied Roberto Calvi, known as God’s Banker for his close association with both the Holy See and its primary banking facility, Banco Ambrosiano, and to an organized-crime syndicate.  Calvi had been found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982, and speculation was swiftly turning from suicide to homicide in that case. It made sense that if the elder Orlandi knew something, taking his daughter would surely seal his lips.

At the time of the teenager’s disappearance, the Vatican secret service firmly believed she was kidnapped to be used as leverage either by supporters of Ali Agca or Calvi.  Last Saturday, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, Federico Lombardi, acknowledged they probably were wrong. “At the time, the authorities shared the prevailing opinion that the kidnapping might have been used by some obscure criminal organization to send messages or enact pressure in the context of the jailing and interrogation of the pope’s attacker,” he said. But because the Vatican is a sovereign city-state, Italian police do not have jurisdiction to investigate so-called Vatican crimes. The investigation began in earnest again after a series of breaks in late 2004, but John Paul II died shortly after the new lead surfaced, and the thread was lost in the transition in leadership at the Holy See. In 2008, the case was opened again when the transcript of an Italian police interrogation with De Pedis’s lover tied the mobster to the girl’s disappearance.  The lover told police the young girl was kidnapped on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was then the head of the Vatican bank.

Marcinkus, an American, died in 2006, but records show that even the Vatican was suspicious of the priest. De Pedis’s lover said the death was to avenge a debt after the Vatican reneged on mafia loans secured by De Pedis, and that the girl’s body was dumped in a cement truck near the Roman seaside town of Ostia.  De Pedis, having exacted his revenge, then forgave the loan in exchange for the prestigious burial plot inside the Vatican church, she said.

Now, the focus of the investigation has turned to the Vatican itself, and, according to revelations in a letter leaked to the Italian press last week, the Vatican is taking it very seriously. A three-page letter from Lombardi to church higher-ups indicated even he suspected a cover-up.  In the letter, shown on Italian Rai Tre state television, Lombardi wrote of his concerns and asked how to address the press. “Was the non-collaboration [in the initial Orlandi investigation] normal and justifiable affirmation of Vatican sovereignty, or if in fact circumstances were withheld that might have helped clear something up.”

Italian magistrates are now wondering the same thing, and say they feel the Vatican may still be covering up vital information about Orlandi’s mysterious disappearance. They are picking up on a series of leads that stalled in 2005, starting with a tip from an anonymous caller to an Italian detective program Chi’l’ha Visto (“Who Has Seen”). The caller said Orlandi was kidnapped on the orders of the then vicar of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, and that “the secret to the mystery lies in a tomb in Sant’ Apollinare basilica.”

Last month, former Rome mayor and vice premier Walter Veltroni took up the case, asking the Italian interior ministry to ascertain whether the church of Sant’Apollinare is protected from Italian law or whether investigators could exhume De Pedis’s tomb.  The Vatican quickly offered access to the tomb and suggested that perhaps moving the mobster’s remains was a way to quash speculation once and for all. But in an about-face this week, the prosecutors backed down and said they won’t be opening the tomb anytime soon—saying instead that it’s time for someone inside the Vatican to tell the truth. “There are those in the Curia who know elements of the circumstantial evidence,” Giancarlo Capaldo, assistant prosecutor in the case, said on Italian television. “There are people still alive, and still inside the Vatican, who know the truth.”

In the meantime Orlandi’s family is hoping investigators change their minds and open the tomb, even though De Pedis’s widow, Carla Di Giovanni, reportedly is the only person with keys, and now even she is under preliminary investigation in the nearly three-decade-old mystery and probably not feeling very cooperative.

“The declaration by the prosecutors that the truth is known in the Vatican is very heavy, but it’s overshadowed by the strange decision not to open De Pedis’s grave,” Orlandi’s brother, Peter, told La Stampa newspaper over the weekend.  “Implicating the Holy See directly is a huge step forward. Now the Holy See has a moral duty to give a response after years of refusing to cooperate.”

But as long as it’s sealed, the mobster’s grave won’t give up any ghosts, or shed any light on the mystery.

Thanks to Barbie Latza Nadeau

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