Lawyers for long-jailed Genovese family consigliere Bobby Manna and co-defendant claim they were framed by feds
Lawyers for long-imprisoned Genovese family consigliere Louis (Bobby) Manna and a mob associate charged Wednesday the two gangsters were railroaded by federal prosecutors at their 1989 trial.
Manna, now 91, and co-defendant Richard (Bocci) DeSciscio, 78, are both serving 80 years for their convictions in a plot to murder rival Gambino family leader John Gotti and his older brother Gene — along with the shocking execution of a 350-pound mobbed-up businessman inside an Upper East Side restaurant.
“The government mishandled the evidence,” said Jeremy Iandolo, the lawyer representing the tough-as-nails Manna in the Newark Federal Court challenge. “If this evidence was available 30 years ago, this wouldn’t have happened. We believe this man should come home.”
According to Iandolo and DeSciscio attorney Marco Laracca, the convictions were based on “solely manufactured evidence, inconsistent testimony and a faulty elicited identification.”
Manna, a Jersey City tough guy, allegedly served as the powerful Genovese family’s No. 3 man during the reign of “Oddfather” Vincent Gigante.
“Manna’s conviction, predicated on falsely interpreted tapes, could have been avoided but for the Government’s win at any cost position,” the defense argued in a 29-page court filing.
“Today, more than 30 years later, we respectfully ask this court to have the Government affirmatively answer for their wrongs, which caused this miscarriage of justice.”
Iandolo said the famously taciturn Manna was targeted in part because of his eight-year refusal to cooperate with law enforcement in a separate investigation earlier in the 1980s. Manna once famously refused a shot of Novocaine for a prison tooth extradition over fears of breaking his oath of omerta while under the influence.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Newark declined to comment on the allegations. But at the time of the convictions, presiding Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry declared the evidence “fairly shrieked of the defendants’ guilt.”
A third convicted co-defendant, Hoboken restaurant owner Martin (Motts) Casella, died behind bars in 1992.
The defense lawyers alleged prosecutors hid evidence favorable to the defendants, with the documents only emerging through their tireless efforts and sloppy bookkeeping by the feds.
“The government concealed, in trial and then after, thousands of pages of exculpatory evidence ... some erroneously and carelessly turned over by the Government via diligent and continuous FOIL requests,” according to court papers.
The defendants, in addition to the Gotti plot, were convicted in the August 1987 execution of beefy mob associate Irwin Schiff, an FBI informant suspected of skimming cash from the Genovese family.
The sickly Manna’s bid for compassionate release was shot down this past December, despite a lengthy list of medical woes: colitis, a hernia, high blood pressure, vertigo and ulcers.
