'Mob' defense attacks
Scorn for prosecution in racketeering trials
Post-Tribune (IN)
August 15, 1991
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It's a hodgepodge of innuendo plopped against the courtroom wall.
That's how several defense attorneys characterized the government's case Wednesday as the trial of six alleged gamblers and racketeers reached its penultimate day.
This morning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Thill will make a last review of the government's case before the jury to be followed by instructions to jurors from U.S. District Court Judge James Moody.
Then the jury will begin deliberations.
Charged with 57 acts of racketeering and additional charges of conspiracy, extortion and professional gambling are:
Dominick "Tootsie" Palermo, 73, of Orland Park, Ill.; Nicholas "Jumbo" Guzzino, 49, of Chicago Heights, Ill.; Bernard "Snooky" Morgano, 54, of Valparaiso; Sam Nuzzo Jr., 45, of Merrillville; Sam "Frog" Glorioso, 48, of Gary; and Peter "Cadillac Pete" Petros, 56, formerly of Gary, and now of Cicero, Ill.
The defense rested Wednesday morning after Morgano's attorney, Richard F. James, called Mary Jo Norman to the stand.
Norman testified her ex-husband, Anthony Leone, 49, of Porter Township, whom she divorced in January, was "not trustworthy." She said Leone misused money given him by her parents to care for their handicapped son.
It was the first in a barrage of defense attacks on the character and credibility of Leone, a key government witness.
The government alleges Leone was Morgano's "right hand man" in running illegal gambling and extortion rackets in Northwest Indiana during the mid 1980s.
Leone, convicted of gambling charges in 1988, testified against Morgano and the other five defendants here Monday.
Thill, the chief prosecutor throughout the trial, made his closing arguments by ticking off - defendant by defendant - a list of alleged crimes and the evidence the government believes supports the charges.
The government has outlined a mob hierarchy headed by Palermo, the reputed boss of syndicate operations in Northwest Indiana and the south Chicago suburbs. His alleged lieutenant was Guzzino. The Northwest Indiana street boss allegedly was Morgano, from whom Glorioso, Nuzzo and Petros took orders, according to the government.
In defense, however, Kevin Milner, a former assistant U.S. Attorney now representing Palermo, characterized the government's case as "a lot of innuendo, a lot of suggestion, a lot of fill-in-the-blanks."
Ronald Menaker, Guzzino's attorney, again assailed Leone as an opportunist who took advantage of the government that began looking for mobsters in 1983.
Menaker said by 1987, the hundreds of wire-taps used in the case were completed and the investigation ended in 1988, yet the government waited until 1990 to produce the indictments.
"The reason that no indictments were returned was the government had at its disposal massive amounts of information, but they had an investigation that was going nowhere," Menaker said.
Enter Leone, Menaker theorized, who in 1988 desperately wanted out of a federal prison in Terre Haute.
"That's when Tony Leone negotiated himself into this courtroom," Menaker said. "He knew - consumate hustler that he is - exactly what it took."
Attorney James, Morgano's lawyer, said the government's case is like a box filled with 100 pieces grabbed from each of five different picture puzzles.
"Now they're going around with their little rubber hammer trying to pound the picture together," James said.
Scott King, also a former assistant U.S. attorney, now representing Nuzzo, expressed withering scorn for the prosecution.
King asked the jurors to consider if the prosecution's witnesses - most of whom were gamblers - were more afraid of the defendants or the government that traded their testimony for grants of immunity from prosecution.
King, too, alleged the government has failed to meet its burden of proof, but is relying on innuendo and the allegations of mob activity.
"Their fondest hope is that you'll get carried away," King added.
He summed up the U.S. attorney's case in three sentences, two spoken in a mocking tone, the third in a conspiratorial whisper.
"We don't need to be specific."
"We don't need the evidence.
"This is the mafia here."
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