DOJ appeals $100M wrong conviction order
Associated Press
Sat February 16, 2008
Area: Boston (Manchester)
BOSTON - The Justice Department appealed a $102 million judgment Friday awarded last year to two men who spent decades in prison and the families of two others who died there for a murder they didn't commit.
A federal judge found the FBI responsible in July for framing the men for the slaying of Edward "Teddy" Deegan, a small-time thug who was shot in an alley in 1965.
Joseph Salvati, Peter Limone and the families of Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco sued the federal government for malicious prosecution, winning a nearly $102 million combined in a ruling from U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner last July.
In the notice filed four days ahead of the appeal deadline, the Justice Department did not spell out its reasons for challenging the ruling. Department spokesman Charles Miller declined to comment.
Greco and Tameleo died behind bars for the killing. Salvati and Limone were freed after three decades in prison in 2001, after FBI memos related to the Deegan case surfaced during probes of the Boston FBI's corrupt relationship with its gangster informants.
H. Paul Rico, one of the agents blamed in the case, denied during a congressional hearing that he and his partner helped frame an innocent man for Deegan's death, but he acknowledged that Salvati wrongly spent 30 years in prison.
Salvati's attorney, Vincent Garo, said Friday that the government still refuses to recognize any wrongdoing.
"It was more important for the FBI to protect their murderous informants than it was for them to protect innocent men who had young families," he said.
Salvati is now 75, and Limone is 73. Garo has estimated that an appeal would take more than a year and could cost the government as much as $14 million in interest and legal fees if the judgment is upheld.
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