N.Y. Judge Overturns Ex-Officers' Convictions

NEW YORK, June 30 -- Two former New York City police detectives who were found guilty in April of killing for the Mafia were granted a startling reprieve Friday when the trial judge in the case tossed out their murder racketeering conviction.

U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein ruled that the five-year statute of limitations had expired before the government charged Louis Eppolito and Steve Caracappa with helping the Lucchese crime family commit eight murders. The judge also granted both former officers a new trial on their convictions for drug dealing and money laundering.

Weinstein made it clear in his 77-page ruling that he agreed with the jury that both men had betrayed their badge and committed the most vile criminal acts, including murder and kidnapping. But he argued that the law essentially forced him to toss out the convictions.

"The evidence presented at trial overwhelmingly established the defendants' participation in a large number of heinous and violent crimes," Weinstein wrote. "Nevertheless an extended trial, evidentiary hearings, briefings and argument establishes that the five-year statute of limitations mandates granting the defendants a judgment of acquittal on the key charge against them -- racketeering conspiracy."

Eppolito and Caracappa were decorated officers who prosecutors said had become hit men for hire, delivering enemies to the Luccheses and occasionally killing those enemies for a fee. The trial produced a colorful array of underworld miscreants, including a former clothing salesman and pot dealer who had served as Eppolito's liaison to the mob.

After the trial, both former officers accused their attorneys -- Bruce Cutler and Eddie Hayes, high-profile members of the criminal bar and characters in their own right -- of incompetence and requested a new trial.

At an unusual hearing that ended earlier this week, the judge seemed poised to brush aside the idea that Cutler and Hayes had botched the defense.

And in his ruling Friday, the judge maintained that Cutler and Hayes did just fine by their former clients, calling them "skilled, dedicated to their clients and enormously hardworking." But he said that the evidence convinced him that the conspiracy between the former officers and the mob was not "ongoing."

That's crucial because Eppolito and Caracappa were charged not with murder, a state crime without a statute of limitations, but with racketeering -- essentially, with conspiring in a criminal enterprise.

The last of the killings they were accused of taking part in, as part of the conspiracy, occurred in 1991, and federal law requires that a criminal enterprise be active in the previous five years to merit prosecution. Once Eppolito and Caracappa retired from the force in the 1990s, the judge said, they no longer had access to police records, bringing the conspiracy "to a definite close."

The Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office issued a statement Friday, promising an appeal.

"The jury in this case unanimously found Eppolito and Caracappa guilty of racketeering and murder based on overwhelming evidence," the statement read. "And based on the law that was given to them by the court, each of the twelve jurors specifically found that the defendants' heinous crimes were committed within the statute of limitations."

Legal experts said it is highly unusual for a judge to vacate the decision of a jury. The case is rarer still, because attorneys for the defendants did not press the matter before the jury, but they did raise the statute of limitations question in pretrial motions. Apparently, however, the more the judge heard in court, the more certain he became that the government had overstepped.

"In a statute of limitations analysis, it's critical the judge hear the evidence," said Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, "because only through hearing the evidence can a judge tell whether the most recent acts are actually tied to the charged conspiracy."

Because murder is not a federal crime, Walden added, federal prosecutors might ask the state to charge Eppolito and Caracappa with murder if they lose on appeal.

For now, the attorneys for the former officers are planning to ask for bail -- and savoring a surprising victory. Andrea Eppolito, the defendant's daughter, said she and her family were overjoyed. She was in a position that she probably never imagined: praising the man who said her father was a monstrous criminal.

"Whatever the judge's personal opinions are, I'm grateful that he respects the law," she said.