Boston men cleared in mob slaying sue government

The AP reports:

BOSTON — Two Boston men who spent 30 years in prison for an underworld slaying they did not commit are suing the federal government after a judge found that the FBI had withheld evidence that would have cleared them.

In a trial that opened Thursday, those men and the families of two others who were wrongfully convicted but died in prison are seeking damages from the government that could total more than $100 million.

Joseph Salvati, 72, and Peter Limone, 74, were exonerated in 2001 after a state judge found that FBI agents hid wiretap tapes and other information from state prosecutors to protect an FBI informant and former mob hit man, Joseph "The Animal" Barboza.

Barboza was a mob assassin responsible for numerous slayings during Boston's gangland wars of the 1960s. He was also so vital to FBI efforts to crack the mob that it allowed him to frame four men for murder, attorneys for the plaintiffs said in opening statements.

"It was a rigged game ... assented to by the FBI," said attorney Austin McGuigan, who represents Salvati.

The lawsuit was filed after the Justice Department released documents in 2001 that showed the FBI withheld evidence from state prosecutors that could have cleared the men, so the agency could protect an informant who committed the crime.

Justice Department attorney Bridget Lipscomb said federal authorities had no duty to share information with state prosecutors and cannot be liable for the results of a separate state investigation. She also noted the four men had access to some FBI information and top-notch attorneys who raised doubts about Barboza's testimony at their trial.

Limone, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo were sentenced to death in 1968 for the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan but were not executed before the death penalty was banned in 1975. Salvati was sentenced to life in prison.

Salvati, 72, and Limone, 74, were exonerated in 2001 after the Justice Department documents were released. Greco and Tameleo died in prison before being exonerated.

The case is being tried without a jury before U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner.

On Thursday, attorneys for the men and their families said the problems were rooted in a 1960s FBI policy of protecting informants' identities at all costs. Barboza, who moved to California as the first participant in the federal witness-protection program, was shot to death in San Francisco in 1976.

The problems of monopoly information.