Defense teams finish closings in mob trial
Lawyers for the last three of five defendants on trial in the "Family Secrets" mob case gave their closing arguments Wednesday, setting the stage for the bulk of the government's rebuttal today.
Starting off the day was the colorful Joe Lopez, attorney for Frank Calabrese Sr. of Lombard.
Wearing a bright pink and black checkerboard tie, Lopez pounded away at the credibility of Nick Calabrese, the defendant's brother and the government's star witness, as well as Frank Calabrese Jr., the defendant's son and another witness for the prosecution.
"You know, this family's never going to be in the Temple of Palatine," said Lopez, referring to what he said was the temple in Roman mythology where families went to reconcile.
Nick Calabrese testified he and Frank Calabrese Sr. committed over a dozen murders, and Frank Calabrese Jr. secretly recorded his father apparently fessing up to seven of them.
Lopez continued to maintain that Frank Sr. was "play-acting" under pressure of not looking like "a man" to his son.
He said those things "so he wouldn't look like a chump in his own son's eyes," said Lopez.
Paul Augustus Wagner, the attorney for Paul Schiro, took advantage of several misstatements made Monday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Markus Funk in his closing arguments. Although Funk quickly corrected several misstatements he made to the jury, Wagner painted the errors as overreaching by prosecutors who had no evidence against his client, who is accused of killing Emil Vaci in Phoenix with Nick Calabrese.
"I was really wondering what were they (prosecutors) going to do to make up for the lack of evidence against Mr. Schiro," said Wagner. "They did it … by Mr. Funk grievously misstating the evidence."
The bulk of the evidence against Schiro, Wagner said, comes from Nick Calabrese, who cannot be trusted because he is lying to avoid a death sentence, Wagner contended.
"This is a stone-cold killer," said Wagner. "The evidence would suggest that he liked to kill."
And while prosecutors contend Schiro was a mobster who paid tribute to his bosses in the Outfit, Wagner contended there had been no testimony to that effect. In fact, said Wagner, a fellow burglar once told the FBI that Schiro did not kick back to the Outfit for his burglaries.
Ralph Meczyk, attorney for former police officer Anthony Doyle, took a decidedly different approach, choosing to implicate co-defendant Frank Calabrese Sr. in his closing arguments. Up to now, the defendants have avoided shifting blame on one another.
Doyle is accused of using his position in the police evidence room to find out about swatches of a glove that contained Nick Calabrese's blood from the murder scene of John Fecarotta. It was the key that eventually gave feds the leverage to flip Nick Calabrese.
Authorities made video and audio tapes of Doyle visiting Calabrese Sr. in prison and relaying the date that some of the swatches were transferred to the FBI.
Meczyk maintains that in those conversations -- in which Calabrese Sr. does most of the talking and speaks in heavy code -- Doyle was bewildered and simply tried to key in on "buzz words" and throw in a word or two so he appeared to know what was going on and wasn't a "chumbalone," or dummy.
"You heard what Frank (Calabrese) Jr. said about his dad -- he was manipulative," said Meczyk, who contended that Calabrese Sr. manipulated Doyle, too.
As he began the government's rebuttal, assistant U.S. attorney Mitch Mars conceded that Nick Fecarotta was not a model human being.
"There's a reason why they call it the underworld," he said.
But, he added, "the issue is not whether you like Nick Calabrese. The issue is whether you believe him."
And there's one key way you can tell Nick Calabrese is telling the truth, Mars said.
Nick Calabrese never heard the tapes of Frank Calabrese and his son that were recorded in prison. Yet amazingly, the details on seven murders in both accounts are the same, Mars noted.
That points not only to Nick Calabrese's truthfulness, he said, but also to the fact that Frank Calabrese Sr. was not "playacting" at all when he spoke to his son.
"They lied and gave the same lying story? How believable is that?" asked Mars.
Mars will finish his rebuttal this morning before U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel instructs the jury to begin deliberations.