June 12, 2007 Delay in Prosecution Brings an End to a Murder Charge By MICHAEL BRICK
The case against John Sinagra was about as serious as they come: Prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder, saying he had acted on orders from a Colombo crime family capo, using information from a Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor [DeVecchio], to forever silence an 18-year-old man, a witness to a Mafia killing.
But that was more than a decade ago, too long in the estimation of the judge handling the case.
The judge, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, dismissed the charges yesterday, chastising prosecutors and the police for improperly closing the case, failing to interview important witnesses and ignoring investigative leads for years.
"Negligence is not good cause," Justice Reichbach wrote. "The People have failed to meet their burden that there was good cause for this lengthy 16-year delay. As a consequence of this unreasonable delay, the defendant's due process rights have been violated, mandating dismissal of the indictment."
__During a series of hearings to explain the delay, prosecutors declined to call a woman who is a central witness, preserving any surprises in her testimony for the trial of the former F.B.I. supervisor.
__That supervisor, _Roy Lindley DeVecchio_, 67, has been charged with four counts of murder; he is accused of passing information about potential government witnesses to a prized Mafia informant, Gregory Scarpa Sr. The case against Mr. DeVecchio, who has pleaded not guilty and posted $1 million bail with the help of his former F.B.I. colleagues, was set to begin after the trial of Mr. Sinagra.__
Prosecutors said they would appeal the judge's order. But Mr. Sinagra, 39, who had been held without bail since his arraignment in March 2006, was freed to return home to Las Vegas, where he works for a limousine company.
On his way to the courthouse elevators, he shook hands with reporters and chose his words carefully. "I just want to go home," he said. "Excuse me if I'm rude, but I don't want to talk."
___At the trial of Mr. DeVecchio, prosecutors are expected to call Mr. Scarpa's companion of many years, Linda Schiro, to testify about the flow of information between Mr. DeVecchio and Mr. Scarpa, who died in prison in 1994._
_In 2005, long after internal inquiries by the Justice Department had failed to produce charges against Mr. DeVecchio, state prosecutors presented evidence to a grand jury, which indicted Mr. DeVecchio, Mr. Sinagra and another co-defendant.___
Mr. Sinagra was charged with carrying out one of the four killings. Prosecutors said he shot Patrick Porco, 18, a potential witness against the Mafia, on orders from Mr. Scarpa. A lawyer for Mr. Sinagra, Joseph Giaramita, challenged the indictment, arguing that the delay had violated Mr. Sinagra's right to a speedy trial.
Justice Reichbach initially rejected that motion, but as he prepared to set a trial date, prosecutors disclosed documents showing that investigators had been told of Mr. Sinagra's role in 1995. Despite that information, the police closed the case in 1996, attributing the killing to a man who by then was dead.
The judge ordered the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, to show reasonable cause for the delay. In a series of hearings, prosecutors called several investigators and a cooperating witness to recount the chronology of the investigation. They argued that some of the most important evidence did not become available until 2005, including testimony from Ms. Schiro.
In his order yesterday, Justice Reichbach noted that Ms. Schiro had spoken publicly about Mafia life and cooperated with federal prosecutors since at least 2001. Apparently, the judge wrote, she was not asked about the Porco killing until 2005 because the police had improperly closed the case years earlier. To bolster their claim that Ms. Schiro had been unwilling to cooperate until 2005, the judge wrote, prosecutors could have called her to testify in the recent hearings.
The choice before the prosecutors was complex, but one element was underscored by the presence of a young woman who attended the Sinagra hearings faithfully, sitting in the back row with a laptop computer and typing notes for Mr. DeVecchio's defense lawyers.
As the judge read portions of his order aloud yesterday, Mr. Sinagra sat still at the defense table, dressed in a striped tie, blue jeans and a warm-up jacket.
Then, an assistant district attorney, Joseph Alexis, conceded there were no further grounds to hold him, and Mr. Sinagra headed to the elevators, followed by his lawyer, reporters and a court officer. His lawyer, Mr. Giaramita, warned him not to speak, telling reporters that Mr. Sinagra was grateful for the order but also innocent of the charges.
In all the excitement, the court officer neglected to push the button for the ground floor, and soon Mr. Sinagra and his temporary entourage had returned to the heights of the courthouse.
Ignoring his lawyer's advice for a moment, Mr. Sinagra spoke. "I don't want to see this place ever again," he said.