Less is more?
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Scully took a calculated risk Thursday when he limited his opening statement in the Family Secrets trial to less than an hour.
It was an unusual move by federal prosecutors who often go much longer in openings for such a complex and lengthy case.
The government's case will take a few months and offer hundreds of witnesses.
Scully appeared to focus on two goals.
First, Scully focused the case on the victims of the Outfit slayings. Their faces were projected on a large screen so the jurors could easily see them.
Along with the photographs were the names of the men who allegedly took part in the murders. The sheer magnitude of the 18 murders seemed to deeply affect some observers.
The prosecution wanted to make the case as real as possible for the jury.
"This is not 'The Sopranos.' This is not 'The Godfather.' This is about real people, real victims," Scully said.
Next, Scully sketched out a brief overview of the mob's structure and financing.
The government's first witness, former FBI agent James Wagner who battled the Outfit for years, will do more of the same for jurors on Monday.
Any thoughts on the government's calculated risk?
The U.S. Attorney's Opening Statement was exceptional. Going on too long does not mean better, although they want to cover all bases. It was matter of fact, cogent, and the movie scale size of slides of the Victims, with the --long lists of participants on the other side of the screen made
it even more dramatic. I disagree that The prosecution's Opening was too short.
Anybody ever think that maybe Lombardo was an FBI source and that is why Helprin held off on his opening statement? His last mug kind of reminded me of an actor named Jack.
WARMBIR RESPONDS: Is that Jack Nicholson or Jack Black? The most common comparisons I've heard for the Lombardo mug photo are Sadaam Hussein, Rasputin or Santa Claus, take your pick.
Seriously, though, I don't think Lombardo was ever an informant. In a Lombardo profile in the Sun-Times, I reported on an account that has an unidentified caller to the FBI identifying himself as Long John Silver. While a true source relationship never developed, there was suspicion in the FBI, never proven, that the caller was Lombardo, in part because he was trying to steer agents away from Joseph Lombardo Jr.
I bet the FBI never new who was calling, voice comp's only work if you are charging someone right?
WARMBIR RESPONDS: I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, but I'll take a guess and assume you're talking about the James "Little Jimmy" Marcello voice identification issue. (If it's something different, just clarify it in a post.)
The evidence at issue involves the 1986 slayings of the mob's man in Las Vegas, Anthony Spilotro, and his brother, Michael, at a Bensenville area home.
Prosecutors are expected to put on the witness stand the daughter of Michael Spilotro who took two phone calls at home that were for her dad the day he was killed.
After her father got the calls, he said he no longer could attend a graduation party but had to go to a meeting. It would be his last.
Spilotro's daughter is expected to say the man calling was James Marcello. She identified his voice after listening to a series of different voices reading the same newspaper article, in a voice comparison lineup set up by the FBI. One of those voices was Marcello's, but she did not know that at the time.
Spilotro's daughter has said in a sworn affidavit that she had heard Marcello's voice dozens of times before those calls.
Marcello's defense lawyer, Marc Martin, argued that the evidence is unfair and flawed, but U.S. District Judge James Zagel is going to allow it in.
Seems to me Mr Scully made a good call. The Jury will likely respect his consdieration of their time as well as his assumption that they're intelligent enough to figure it out.Rather than sit and have it spelled out in a relentless fashion , only to hear it again and again and again and AGAIN (my God it just occurred to me that they have to listen to ALL OF THE LAWYERS- ia that right ?).
But then again I suppose there is the risk of the notetakers who would have written down everything Mr Scully promised to produce and checked it off as he "proved" it, thereby providing the psychological comfort of conviction...unless he didn't want to plant the idea in their heads that he didn'y have anything concrete? It seems that these days unless you have video of the crime, and in some cases even if you do ha ha ,it doesn't stick. I think when it comes to convicting someone of murder, you better have some video or very hard evidence ..not just testimony of some guys who made deals and old evidence that wasnt enough for it to stick before.
My point is this; the FBI could have very easily identified who “Long John Silver” was when you consider the voice comparison technology out there. It just seems they were not in such a big hurry to put Lombardo away back then.