2 "MAFIA COPS" WIN RETRIAL

NEW YORK -- They did the crimes but might not do the time.

In a stunning development Friday, a federal judge threw out key
racketeering-conspiracy convictions against "Mafia Cops" Louis
Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa -- convictions that included
involvement in eight gangland killings from 1986 to 1991 -- because
of a conflict with the federal five-year statute of limitations.

U.S. District Court Judge Jack Weinstein, in a 77-page ruling, said
the trial "overwhelmingly established" the guilt of Eppolito, 57, and
Caracappa, 64, in the slayings and other crimes, but wrote that the
legal issue compelled him to acquit them.

"As a result of spillover prejudice resulting from the trial of that
charge [racketeering conspiracy] with other crimes charged in the
indictment, defendants are entitled to a new trial on the remaining
charges," Weinstein said.

He ordered a new trial for both men on charges of drug dealing and,
in Eppolito's case, money laundering. The retrial would involve
charges that Eppolito and Caracappa were involved in a small
methamphetamine transaction in Nevada, where they both lived after
retiring from the New York Police Department.

"We intend to pursue an appeal," said Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for
U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf.

Should the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverse Weinstein's
decision, the provisional sentences of life imprisonment he had given
Eppolito and Caracappa would be reinstated.

Bail applications for the jailed defendants, who were convicted April
6, are expected to be filed.

Lawyers reacted with astonishment as news of the ruling ricocheted
around the legal community.

"We won the case! We won the case!" Edward Hayes, who represented
Caracappa at trial, said when told of the decision.

Hayes and Bruce Cutler, who represented Eppolito at trial, split with
their clients after the convictions. Eppolito and Caracappa said the
lawyers' representation of them was poor, an assessment with which
Weinstein disagreed. The defendants hired new lawyers, who brought
the motions that resulted in Friday's acquittals.

"I guess Rae [Koshetz] and I didn't do such a bad job after all,"
Hayes said of work he and his co-counsel did in researching the
statute-of-limitations issue for the trial.

Eppolito and Caracappa were indicted on March 9, 2005. The most
recent killing in the case took place in May 1991. Generally, under
federal criminal law, crimes alleged in a racketeering conspiracy
have to have occurred within five years of the indictment.

Before trial, Weinstein frequently expressed reservations about
whether crimes so far in the past could be prosecuted within the
five-year statute of limitations.

To address the conflict, federal prosecutors charged Eppolito and
Caracappa with involvement in a Nevada drug sale in late 2004 and
early 2005. Prosecutors maintained the Nevada crime was part of the
original racketeering-enterprise conspiracy, thus extending the
alleged conspiracy beyond the crucial cutoff date of March 9, 2000.

Weinstein denied a defense pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment,
saying the nature of the alleged crimes required a full trial. When
the jury convicted Eppolito and Caracappa in April, the panel
specifically found the conspiracy continued beyond March 9, 2000.

Friday, Weinstein stressed that prosecutors had proved the defendants
were involved in eight slayings, two kidnappings and other
wrongdoing. But as a matter of law, he said that after Eppolito's and
Caracappa's retirement from the department, by early 1990, "the
conspiracy that began in New York in the 1980s had come to a definitive close."