A fed­er­al judge ordered the U.S. gov­ern­ment to pay a record $102 mil­lion for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in the wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions of four men in 1968, includ­ing one man who was sen­tenced to death. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said the FBI’s con­duct was ​“shock­ing” and char­ac­ter­ized the gov­ern­men­t’s expla­na­tion for the events lead­ing to the wrong­ful con­vic­tions of Louis Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone and Joseph Salvati as ​“absurd.” She wrote, ​“Now is the time to say and say with­out equiv­o­ca­tion: this ​‘cost’ — to the lib­er­ty of four men, to our sys­tem of jus­tice — is not remote­ly accept­able. This case is about inten­tion­al mis­con­duct, sub­or­na­tion of per­jury, con­spir­a­cy, the fram­ing of inno­cent men.… The FBI’s con­duct was inten­tion­al, it was out­ra­geous, it caused plain­tiffs immea­sur­able and unbear­able pain and the FBI must be held accountable.” 


Judge Gertner found that the FBI knew that Joseph ​“The Animal” Barboza — their star wit­ness in the fed­er­al case against Greco, Tameleo, Limone and Salvati — was lying when he iden­ti­fied the four men as respon­si­ble for a 1965 gang­land mur­der. Despite knowl­edge that the infor­mant was lying, fed­er­al agents vouched for his cred­i­bil­i­ty because he was a ​“top ech­e­lon” infor­mant in their war against La Cosa Nostra. In the years that fol­lowed, the FBI cov­ered up the infor­man­t’s lie as the wrong­ly con­vict­ed men strug­gled to prove their inno­cence. As that fight con­tin­ued, Greco and Tameleo died in prison. Salvati and Limone (who was orig­i­nal­ly on death row in Massachusetts), each served near­ly 30 years behind bars before being freed when their con­vic­tions were over­turned in the late 1990s.

The judge’s order awards Salvati $29 mil­lion. Limone will receive $26 mil­lion, and the remain­der of the set­tle­ment will go to Greco’s and Tameleo’s estates, their wives, and fam­i­ly mem­bers. ​“I missed all the anniver­saries and birth­days and grad­u­a­tions of my chil­dren. … Thirty years — and they done this inten­tion­al­ly. No mon­ey could make up for it,” Salvati said after the ver­dict was announced.
(Washington Post, July 27, 2007). See Innocence.

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