Family Man

DiDonato served up this memorable exchange with Judge Shira Scheindlin, who stepped in periodically to clarify questions.

Judge: Up until that point in time had you ever heard him [Gambino captain Nicholas Corozzo] order you to murder anybody?

DiDonato: At that point in time he did not tell me to murder him.

Judge: No, I say at that point in time had he ever told you to murder anybody?

DiDonato: There was another instance a few months before where he told me to teach someone a very valuable lesson.

Judge: What lesson did you teach that person? Was he murdered or beaten?

DiDonato: No, we shot him. We attempted to take his life.

A shooting, it seems, would be a very valuable lesson. But nobody in the Mafia ever seems to learn. No surprise there. Now that big companies like Merrill Lynch are loaded with second- and third-generation immigrants, only the dimmest of aspiring financiers need to know how to break legs to lend money. The Mafia has become the enterprise of last resort.

The only applicants for job openings, such as they are, tend to be violent dopes.

Less Than Angelic

It's tricky, relying on the testimony of gangsters who've flipped to put away gangsters who haven't.

Every witness called by the government knew that the more dirt they dished, the better the chances that a judge will go easy on them come their day of reckoning. This, according to the defense, created incentives for witnesses to lie in ways that incriminated their clients. As every one of these informants admitted, lying comes easily -- even under oath.

"The government would rather call upstanding pillars of the community," prosecutor Michael McGovern told the jury. But those people "don't participate in murder. Law-abiding citizens are not invited to discuss plots and schemes."