Thomas Pitera was a member of the Bonanno organized crime family in Brooklyn who headed a crew of his own, and in 1992 a federal jury in the Eastern District of New York convicted him of racketeering, of supervising a continuing criminal enterprise, of murder in furtherance of that enterprise and of several narcotics offenses. He was about 35 when federal agents arrested him in June 1990. The government's case rested on a series of killings between 1987 and 1989 that it tied to the crew's drug business, and prosecutors sought the death penalty on one count. The jury did not recommend it. The court imposed seven terms of life imprisonment, along with shorter terms and a fine of $250,000, and the Second Circuit affirmed the judgment in 1993. Later motions to reopen the case failed in 2000, 2010 and 2012. He was still serving those sentences when his last reported appeal failed in 2012.
Pitera came from Brooklyn and was a member of the Bonanno family who led a crew. He was 35 at the time of his arrest. Prosecutors alleged that from 1986 he supervised street-level sales of cocaine, marijuana and heroin in large quantities, and that the crew moved as much as 220 pounds of cocaine a year. A law enforcement source quoted at the time said that some of the killings tied to the crew were organized crime business and some were connected with drugs.
The Second Circuit later described the crew's activities in its own terms. In its 1993 opinion the court wrote that the evidence "abundantly established" Pitera as the ringleader of a criminal group involved in murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping and armed robbery, and that he personally committed several of the murders. The group was known within the Bonanno family as the Pitera crew.
Two members of the crew became central to the later proceedings. Frank Gangi was an accomplice who went on to testify against him, and Vincent Giattino was a member of the crew who was tried separately.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested Pitera on Sunday, June 3, 1990, and a federal complaint was unsealed the next day. Twenty people were arrested on the Sunday and Monday, and twelve others named in the case remained at large, some of whom were expected to surrender on Tuesday. Pitera and 31 other members of the crew were charged with racketeering and other counts. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Andrew J. Maloney, announced the case, and Robert Bryden, the DEA special agent in charge in New York, said the case showed the link between drugs, violence and death.
The complaint tied the crew to at least seven murders, and officials said that Pitera, who was alleged to head the group, might be responsible for as many as 30 killings. That larger figure was never charged. Pitera and 19 others were arraigned late on the Monday before U.S. Magistrate Carol Ammon. Pitera was ordered detained pending a hearing on June 11 on whether he should be held without bail until trial. Ten others were detained pending hearings that week, and nine were released on secured bonds of $100,000 to $200,000.
The complaint named several of the dead. It alleged the death of Talal Siksik in June 1987, and named Solomon Stern and Richard Leone. It also alleged the deaths of two further men in July 1988.
The case against Pitera depended heavily on Frank Gangi. Gangi was arrested in April 1990 on a traffic code violation and then offered to cooperate in the investigation of the Pitera crew. He admitted serious crimes of his own, including taking part in five murders, and pleaded guilty to one racketeering count and one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, which exposed him to a possible life sentence.
At Pitera's trial he testified that he took part directly in many of the charged murders and that he committed them together with Pitera. In February 1993 Judge Raggi sentenced him to 10 years in prison, well below the life term the plea allowed, and described his cooperation as extraordinary, more than that of any other person who had appeared before her. He kept cooperating afterward. In January 1994 the government moved for a reduction of his sentence, and the district court denied the motion the same day, before Gangi knew of it, on the ground that his own conduct was too serious to permit a sentence below 10 years. In January 1995 the Second Circuit vacated that order and sent the matter back, holding that a defendant must have the chance to respond to the government's motion before the court rules.
The case against Pitera, United States v. Pitera, No. 90 CR 424, was assigned to Judge Reena Raggi. The indictment had twenty counts covering racketeering, drug trafficking and related federal offenses, and it charged nine murders in all. The government alleged that Pitera headed the drug enterprise and personally committed seven of the nine. Count Three charged that Pitera killed Richard Leone and Solomon Stern while engaged in, or working in furtherance of, a continuing criminal enterprise, an offense under 21 U.S.C. § 848(e)(1)(A), which carries a possible sentence of death. The government's notice of intention to seek the death penalty gave the date of that offense as March 15, 1989.
The notice also listed a series of earlier killings that the government said were intentional and premeditated: Talal Siksik, Marek Kucharsky, Phyllis Burdi, Joseph Balzano, Carlos Acosta and Fernando Aguilera, among others. Three co-defendants, Richard David, Frank Martini and William Bright, pleaded guilty before the trial. David pleaded to racketeering, Bright to drug conspiracy and racketeering, and Martini to racketeering.
The murder count belonged to a federal statute aimed at drug enterprises. Subsection (e)(1)(A) of 21 U.S.C. § 848 reaches a person who "intentionally kills or counsels, commands, induces, procures, or causes the intentional killing of an individual" while engaged in or working in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise, and the offense carries a possible sentence of death. The government gave notice that it would seek that sentence on Count Three and that it intended to prove three statutory aggravating factors.
Before the trial Pitera and several friends of the court challenged the constitutionality of the provision. On May 26, 1992, Judge Raggi rejected those challenges and denied his motion. She held that the death penalty was not unconstitutional in all cases, that the statute narrowed the class of defendants who could be sentenced to death and so did not risk arbitrary imposition, that the prosecutors' choice of non-statutory aggravating factors was not an unlawful delegation of legislative power, and that Pitera had not been singled out arbitrarily or vindictively. In a separate order the same day she denied a government motion to amend its death penalty notice. The ruling came before any verdict.
Pitera was tried by a jury in the Eastern District of New York in 1992 before Judge Raggi. The jury found him guilty of racketeering under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c), of supervising a continuing criminal enterprise under 21 U.S.C. § 848(a) and (c), of murder in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise under 21 U.S.C. § 848(e)(1)(A), and of several narcotics and related offenses. The government had sought the death penalty on the murder count, and the jury did not recommend it. The court entered judgment on November 6, 1992.
The sentence was seven terms of life imprisonment, four terms of 20 years and five terms of 10 years. Three of the life terms, two of the 20-year terms and one of the 10-year terms run consecutively. The court also imposed a fine of $250,000.
Gangi testified at the trial of Giattino as well. Giattino was convicted by a jury before Judge Raggi of racketeering, murder, narcotics and related offenses, and sentenced to five concurrent life terms, two concurrent 10-year terms and a consecutive 30-year term, with 23 years of supervised release and a fine of $200,000. The evidence against him was that he took part in the killing of Phyllis Burdi at Pitera's direction, in the hope that Pitera would sponsor his promotion to full membership in the family. The Second Circuit affirmed in a summary order on November 5, 1996.
Pitera appealed, and on September 22, 1993, the Second Circuit affirmed in an opinion by Chief Judge Jon O. Newman, joined by Circuit Judge Mahoney and District Judge Warren W. Eginton. The panel rejected each of six claims. It held that a reasonable person would not question Judge Raggi's impartiality because of a videotaped lecture she had given to a law enforcement task force, noting that the lecture also criticized prosecutors and that she spoke to defense groups. It accepted the government's explanation for the short delay in sealing recordings of intercepted conversations and found no sign of bad faith or tampering. It found that probable cause supported the warrant even after the errors Pitera identified in the supporting affidavit were corrected. It accepted the government's statement that an informant whose identity Pitera sought was not Gangi, found the jury instructions on informant testimony adequate, and held that the district court acted within its discretion in keeping a juror who had first voiced doubts and later said he had no doubt about serving fairly.
Pitera sought relief repeatedly in the years that followed, largely by attacking Gangi's testimony. After a habeas petition was dismissed, he moved in June 1999 to vacate the dismissal under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 or, alternatively, § 2241, relying on material from Gangi's own arrest files, which he said showed that Gangi was the actual killer. On December 21, 2000, Judge Raggi rejected the motion, writing that the new material did not undercut Gangi's testimony and that Pitera's involvement was corroborated in important respects.
On October 30, 2009, he moved under the Innocence Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3600, for testing of six items said to have been taken from Gangi. In a sworn affidavit he wrote that he was completely innocent of the charges. The government answered on February 19, 2010, that it could not locate the items and that most had probably been destroyed, and that testing would not undercut Gangi's account in light of the other evidence. On April 9, 2010, Judge Dearie denied the motion, finding that the lack of a link between Pitera and the items would not raise a reasonable probability that he had not committed the offense.
The Second Circuit affirmed on April 3, 2012, in an opinion by Chief Judge Jacobs and Judge Katzmann. The opinion had been substantially drafted by Judge Miner, who died on February 18, 2012, and the remaining two judges agreed with it. The court held that the testing would not create a reasonable probability of innocence, because the government's case already held that Gangi committed the murders in conjunction with Pitera. Because Pitera could not show that testing could produce material evidence of innocence, the court did not reach his arguments about the government's efforts to locate the items.
Pitera was serving the life terms imposed in 1992 when the Second Circuit ruled against him in April 2012, the most recent reported ruling in his case.
The number of people Pitera killed is not settled. Officials put the figure at as many as 30 in 1990, a number that was never charged or proved. The indictment charged nine murders, and the government's capital notice names nine people; which of those deaths the verdict rested on has not been reported.
Pitera has maintained since the 2009 motion that he is innocent, and his later filings argue that Gangi, not he, committed the killings. The district court and the Second Circuit rejected those claims, and Judge Raggi found that Gangi's account was corroborated in important respects.
1986: Prosecutors later alleged that Pitera began supervising street-level drug sales from this year.
June 1987: Date given in the complaint for the death of Talal Siksik.
March 15, 1989: Date given in the government's notice for the deaths of Richard Leone and Solomon Stern.
April 1990: Frank Gangi is arrested on a traffic violation and begins cooperating.
June 3-4, 1990: Pitera is arrested; a federal complaint is unsealed; he is arraigned before a magistrate and detained pending a bail hearing.
May 26, 1992: Judge Raggi rejects the constitutional challenges to the death penalty provision.
1992: Jury trial in the Eastern District of New York; the jury convicts and does not recommend the death penalty.
November 6, 1992: Judgment entered; seven life terms and further terms.
February 1993: Gangi is sentenced to 10 years.
September 22, 1993: The Second Circuit affirms.
January 10, 1995: The Second Circuit remands Gangi's sentence-reduction motion.
November 5, 1996: The Second Circuit affirms Giattino's conviction.
December 21, 2000: Judge Raggi rejects Pitera's 1999 motion.
April 9, 2010: Judge Dearie denies the motion for testing.
April 3, 2012: The Second Circuit affirms the denial.