A landmark victory for wrongfully convicted men and their families

A team of lawyers, among them NPAP’s Howard Friedman and Michael Avery, has won a $101.7 million judgment on behalf of four men convicted in 1968 for a Mafia related murder they did not commit.  On July 26, 2007 US District Judge Nancy Gertner ordered the government to pay the landmark sum because “[t]he FBI’s misconduct was clearly the sole cause of this conviction.”

In this case, which Michael Avery calls “the most sordid and shocking case that I came across in nearly four decades of litigating law enforcement misconduct,”  the FBI agents suborned perjury, framed four men and conspired to keep them in jail for over thirty years.  The four, Joseph Salvati, Peter J. Limone, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo, were implicated in the murder of Edward Deegan by Joe Barboza, the FBI’s star witness and mafia hit man, who himself was involved in killing Deegan.  Based on Barboza’s testimony, which the FBI knew to be false, Limone, Tameleo, and Greco were sentenced to death, Salvati to life in prison.  The death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment when the death penalty was vacated. 

Tameleo and Greco died in prison in 1985 and 1995, respectively.  Salvati was freed in 1997 when then Governor Weld commuted his sentence.  In 2001, after a lengthy investigation into the Boston office of the FBI, Limone was released and a new trial concluded that there was no good faith basis to further prosecute the defendant.  Based on this investigation, all four men were eventually exonerated.  The civil lawsuit against the FBI was filed in 2002.

To read Judge Gertner's verdict click here

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