Goodfellas found innocent!

[jimmy olsen]

Never rat on you friends and keep your mouth shut

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/nyregion/vincent-asaro-accused-in-lufthansa-heist-is-found-not-guilty.html?_r=0

Vincent Asaro, the reputed mobster charged in connection with the notorious 1978 Lufthansa robbery, walked out of federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday a free man after a jury cleared him of racketeering and other charges.

The verdicts, delivered after little more than two days of deliberations, left many in the courtroom stunned, most visibly prosecutors from the United States attorney's office, which had spent years building a case against Mr. Asaro, 80, with testimony from high-ranking Mafia figures and recordings made by an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But the case relied heavily on the cooperation of some of those Mafia figures, some of them admitted killers, and the jury ultimately rejected the government's accusation that Mr. Asaro helped carry out a criminal enterprise engaged in murder and robbery, most notoriously the Lufthansa robbery, which became a central plot point in the film "Goodfellas."

When the juror chosen to deliver the verdict said "Not guilty" on the first count — the racketeering charge, by far the most complicated and serious of the charges — there was a startled silence in the courtroom.

After the "not guilty" verdict on the second and third counts, for extortion, Mr. Asaro pumped his right fist in the air three times. Once the jury left, he clapped sharply, then hugged his lawyers. "Your Honor, thank you very much," he said.

As he walked out of the courthouse on Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn, Mr. Asaro raised his hands in the air and shouted, "Free!"

Flanked by his lawyers, Elizabeth Macedonio and Diane Ferrone, he fielded a flurry of questions from reporters, who asked what he was going to do ("play some paddleball"), where he was heading ("to my friend's restaurant") and what he was going to eat ("anything but a bologna sandwich").

The jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn had begun deliberations late on Monday and continued through the week, with a break on Wednesday for Veterans Day.

To secure a conviction on the racketeering count — for which Mr. Asaro might have faced up to life in prison — prosecutors would have had to prove two or more of the 14 racketeering acts they alleged as part of the charge.

During a three-week trial, prosecutors argued that Mr. Asaro, whose father and grandfather were members of the Mafia, had committed murder and robbery and performed shakedowns and other crimes on behalf of his Mafia family, the Bonannos.

The most famous one, depicted in the movie "Goodfellas," was the robbery at the Lufthansa airline terminal at Kennedy Airport. It was then said to be the largest cash robbery in United States history. Mr. Asaro helped plan it, they said, and his accomplices stole $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels from a cargo vault.

Although prosecutors had long suspected the Mafia's involvement in the robbery, they had not brought charges against any member until the case against Mr. Asaro, leaving unsolved one of the city's most notorious robberies.


Prosecutors brought a queue of informers who testified about Mr. Asaro's role in the Mafia and in various crimes. Evidence also included surveillance photos from the 1970s on, and several F.B.I. agents who detailed the man's comings and goings for several decades.

But the key to the prosecution's case was an informer named Gaspare Valenti, Mr. Asaro's cousin. Tired of Mr. Asaro's berating him, and broke, Mr. Valenti testified he approached the F.B.I. in 2008 and began telling them about Mr. Asaro's crimes.

That had helped prosecutors link the Lufthansa crime, and many others, to Mr. Asaro. Mr. Valenti also recorded Mr. Asaro from 2010 to 2013.

In her closing argument, Ms. Macedonio attacked Mr. Valenti's credibility. "Gaspar Valenti was an experienced liar," she said, using another name Mr. Valenti goes by. "Once you eliminate Gaspar as a reliable person," she said, "then you won't be able to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt with regards to the crimes alleged against Vincent Asaro."

Ms Macedonio also argued that some of prosecutors' other evidence — surveillance photos in which Mr. Asaro was not committing crimes, phone books from other Mafia members that listed him in them — did not prove anything.
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The crimes prosecutors accused Mr. Asaro of committing as part of the criminal enterprise included murder. They said he killed a man in 1969 whom he suspected of being an informer, prosecutors charged. The man, Paul Katz, owned a Queens warehouse where Mr. Asaro and James Burke, a Mafia associate known as Jimmy the Gent, would unload their goods. After Mr. Asaro and Mr. Burke were arrested at the warehouse, they began to suspect Mr. Katz of working with the police, Mr. Valenti testified.

One morning in 1969, Mr. Burke and Mr. Asaro arranged to meet Mr. Valenti at a house his father was building in Queens. Mr. Valenti said they brought materials for cracking into concrete, and brought Mr. Katz's body. Mr. Valenti said Mr. Asaro revealed that they had strangled Mr. Katz with a dog chain and that they then buried him underneath the basement concrete.

In the 1980s, Mr. Valenti said, he and Mr. Asaro's son, Jerome, dug up and moved the body after Mr. Burke, who was in prison at the time, "caught a delusion" and worried that the body would be found.


Noah Remnick contributed reporting.

[derspiess]

Great movie, though.  Never gets old.  I watch it a few times a year.

[Admiral Yi]

Great movie, though.  Never gets old.  I watch it a few times a year.

Not saying I'm disagreeing, but I think it was also the first movie in which De Niro started to substitute grimacing for acting.  Either Goodfellas or Analyze This, not sure which came out first.

[Razgovory]

Never saw it.  I tend to avoid those movies.

[Eddie Teach]

Either Goodfellas or Analyze This, not sure which came out first.

Goodfellas came out nine years earlier.

And yeah, it's not known as one of DeNiro's greatest performances. It was Joe Pesci who won an Oscar for his performance. DeNiro wasn't even nominated(though he was nominated for another film the same year, Awakenings).

[Admiral Yi]

Goodfellas came out nine years earlier.

And yeah, it's not known as one of DeNiro's greatest performances. It was Joe Pesci who won an Oscar for his performance. DeNiro wasn't even nominated(though he was nominated for another film the same year, Awakenings).

Can you name a great (or even pretty good) performance by De Niro in the period starting with Goodfellas?  I can't.

[DGuller]

Never saw it.  I tend to avoid those movies.

It's much better than Godfather, in my opinion, though I never saw it either.  I can't stand The Godfather's portrayal of how Mafia members were just noble entrepreneurs occasionally killing out of love.

[Barrister]

Ah Jimmy...  "not guilty" is NOT the same as "innocent".

[Eddie Teach]

Goodfellas came out nine years earlier.

And yeah, it's not known as one of DeNiro's greatest performances. It was Joe Pesci who won an Oscar for his performance. DeNiro wasn't even nominated(though he was nominated for another film the same year, Awakenings).

Can you name a great (or even pretty good) performance by De Niro in the period starting with Goodfellas?  I can't.

Heat. Silver Linings Playbook. I'm sure there's a couple more that weren't dialed in.   

[derspiess]

Agree with Yi now that I think of it. But really all De Niro had to do in Goodfellas was show up.

[derspiess]

Never saw it.  I tend to avoid those movies.

It's much better than Godfather, in my opinion, though I never saw it either.  I can't stand The Godfather's portrayal of how Mafia members were just noble entrepreneurs occasionally killing out of love.

Godfather was an amazing movie. Overall if put it above Goodfellas.

[Eddie Teach]

Godfather may have been romanticized a bit, but they were clearly still villains. Just not as petty as the ones in Goodfellas.

[derspiess]

Yep, and they all pay the price eventually. Godfather just has more layers to it, sort of like Apocalypse Now.

And it's not like Goodfellas wasn't romanticized. Have you seen pics of the real life people? Yikes.

[dps]

Goodfellas came out nine years earlier.

And yeah, it's not known as one of DeNiro's greatest performances. It was Joe Pesci who won an Oscar for his performance. DeNiro wasn't even nominated(though he was nominated for another film the same year, Awakenings).

Can you name a great (or even pretty good) performance by De Niro in the period starting with Goodfellas?  I can't.

Well, there's the aforementioned Awakenings, particularly notable in that he's not playing a tough guy of some sort in it. 

[celedhring]

Thought he was great in Jackie Brown. A Bronx Tale too.

But yeah, he started phoning it in during the 90s. Scorsese duly replaced him by Di Caprio anyway.