The nightmare is finally over. As you may or may not know whosarat.com had a serious server crash a few weeks ago which forced us to rebuild the site. Luckily we only lost a handful of profiles but we are confident those profiles will be replaced by our members this week... All whosarat.com memberships that were affected by the site being down have been reset... Thank you for your patience and continuous support!!!!!

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Sean Bucci &
Whosarat.com Staff

Mandatory minimum sentencing through a judges eyes
Published: 12:33 pm Thu, March 22, 2012
By Nancy Gertner --Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly

Every U.S. judge knows what it is like to sentence a defendant to a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment that makes no sense. Every judge has been obliged to impose a punishment that everyone in the courtroom   the defendant, surely, but even the prosecutor   knows was unfair.

The judge can roll her eyes but has no authority to consider anything else. The prosecutor chose the sentence when he chose the charge. He (and the Legislature) sentenced, not the judge. And from that decision there is no appeal.

Why couldn t the prosecutor do something about it? He decided on a mandatory minimum charge before he knew anything about the defendant s personal background. And when he finally did, office policy   or worse, politics   prevented him from doing anything about it.

The prosecutor may say that the "public demands" a severe sentence. Hardly.

U.S. District Court Judge James Gwinn from Ohio asks jurors after a conviction what they think the sentence ought to be. Invariably, the jury   the people s representatives, after all   chooses a sentence far, far lower than the law requires the judge to impose.

Drug cases are the worst. U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson, a former mob prosecutor, observed that while we think about the big miscarriages of justice, like the innocent people released from jail after serving a long time, most injustices are "in small doses, in cases involving guilty defendants, which makes them easier to overlook."

Mandatory minimums force judges to treat the crack-dealing defendant who lives in his car because he is homeless the same as the guy dealing crack to buy a Porsche; the defendant selling cocaine to support his addiction the same as the one selling cocaine to support his lavish lifestyle; the young man who distributes drugs to get school supplies for his sisters because he has no responsible adults in his life to play that role the same as the one who distributes drugs to get jewelry for his girlfriend.

Take the case of Roberto Vasquez, a 36-year-old charged with a drug offense.

Sexually abused by his brother, he struggled with depression, dropped out of high school, and by his early 20s was addicted to cocaine.

He married and had children, but attempted suicide after learning of his wife s infidelity. When he was released from the hospital, his wife denied him access to the children. He entered into another long-term relationship, had a child and also raised his lover s daughter.

He worked continuously, but when his ex-wife acted up again, keeping him from their children, he relapsed. To support his cocaine habit, not to mention his family, Vasquez went to work for one of his older brothers, dealing drugs.

The government agreed that he was a minor street dealer, not remotely comparable to the other conspirators. In fact, when he tried to cooperate with the government, his role was so small, he did not have much information to give.

The government could have charged him with an offense that carried no minimum sentence, but it did not. It charged him as a conspirator with his brother, which meant both the big dealer and the minor one were each facing 10-year minimum sentences.

The prosecutor agreed to drop the 10-year mandatory minimum if Vasquez pleaded guilty to a "lesser" charge, one with a mandatory minimum of five years.
To avoid what Judge Gleeson described as a ridiculous sentence, Vasquez was obliged to plead guilty to an unfair charge.

The decision to charge the five-year mandatory minimum meant there was "no judging going on at Vasquez s sentencing," Judge Gleeson observed.

The prosecutor s decision made irrelevant all of the factors that should have gone into a just sentence: the defendant s difficult childhood; his longstanding addiction and mental health history; how he came to play a minor role in his brother s drug business (to support his addiction, not to become a narcotics entrepreneur with a proprietary stake in the drugs); that he tried to cooperate with the government but did not know enough; what his imprisonment would do to the two young children whom he was raising and was devoted to; that his prior convictions all arose out of his ex-wife s refusal to permit him to see their children.

Certainly no lenient judge, Judge Gleeson, if he had discretion, would have sentenced Vasquez to two years with a period of supervision and treatment.

"The absence of fit between the crude method of punishment and the particular set of circumstances before me was conspicuous," the judge said. "When I imposed sentence on the weak and sobbing Vasquez on March 5, everyone present, including the prosecutor, could feel the injustice."

NY Times Editorial: Dementia Behind Bars

Editorial: Dementia Behind Bars
Published: March 25, 2012
NY Times

The get-tough-on-crime and mandatory sentencing policies that swept America beginning in the 1970s did more than drive up the inmate population and prison costs. They also ensured that inmates who once might have been seen as rehabilitated and given parole would grow old and even die behind bars. As a result, prisons are struggling to furnish costly, specialized care to ever more inmates who suffer from age-related infirmities, especially dementia.

According to a report from Human Rights Watch, (Old Behind Bars:http://www.hrw.org/node/104747/section/5) in 2010 roughly 125,000 of the nation s 1.5 million inmates were 55 years of age and over. This represented a 282 percent increase between 1995 and 2010, compared with a 42 percent increase in the overall inmate population. If the elderly inmate population keeps growing at the current rate, as is likely, the prison system could soon find itself overwhelmed with chronic medical needs.

There is no official count of how many inmates suffer from dementia. But some gerontologists say the current caseload represents the trickle before the deluge. They say the risk of the disease is higher behind bars because inmates are sicker to start with   with higher rates of depression, diabetes, hypertension, H.I.V./AIDS and head trauma. Given these risk factors, the dementia rate in prison could well grow at two or three times that of the world outside.

This is a daunting prospect for prison officials whose difficulties in keeping pace with the present dementia caseload were underscored in a recent report by The Times s Pam Belluck. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dementia-among-aging-criminals.html?scp=1&sq=belluck  dementia prisons&st=cse) The article portrayed officials in crowded, understaffed correctional facilities scrambling to care for ailing inmates who can no longer feed, dress or clean themselves and who create conflict and disorder because they can no longer follow simple commands.

The Human Rights Watch study said the cost of providing medical care to elderly inmates is between three and nine times the cost for younger ones. Another study found that the annual average health care cost per prisoner is about $5,500; about $11,000 for inmates aged 55 to 59 and $40,000 for inmates 80 or older. A specialized unit for cognitively impaired inmates in the New York State system costs more than $90,000 per bed per year, more than twice the figure for general inmates.

Many inmates, obviously, can never be released, and they will continue to require special care. But the states must pursue other avenues as well. They can foster partnerships between prisons and nursing homes to improve the quality of care; consider compassionate release programs for frail inmates who no longer present a threat to public safety; and, no less important, revisit the mandatory sentencing policies that did away with judicial discretion and filled the prisons to bursting in the first place.

More God, Less Crime- Baylor University and The Templeton Press. A compitetion -video or essays

More God, Less Crime
For more details go to:
http://moregodlesscrime.com/mglc-prize/

Since it was first published in 2011 More God, Less Crime has helped to foster a national debate about how faith-based approaches are making a difference and what future collaborations between sacred and secular groups might look like in addressing problems like youth crime, offender treatment, prisoner reentry, and aftercare. In order to facilitate this national discussion, Templeton Press has decided to host a competition to honor exemplary efforts that all too often go unnoticed. Winners will receive the More God, Less Crime Prize.

Objective:
Create a short video or written essay that shares your organization's most effective practice in using a faith-based approach to combat crime or delinquency. These can be unique new approaches or well-established techniques#194;#151;the important thing that we want to know is what works? We want to gather stories from people like you who are working hard to make a difference in our communities, but whose efforts tend to be overlooked. We want to see and hear the transformative stories of the people you are serving. Our ultimate goal for these entries is to use them to connect people and ideas across the country and around the globe. The idea you share today could help save a life or heal a community thousands of miles away.

Judging:
The primary consideration in judging will be your ability to quantify and document the effectiveness of your practice. If you have an idea that works, tell us the story: show us how it works, show us why it works, and show others how they could integrate your approach into their programs. Judges will consider overall effectiveness, measurability, and the extent to which the practice can be applied in other organizations and replicated in other communities and jurisdictions.

Prizes:
There will be two prizes of $5,000. One will go to the best video entry and the other will go to the best written entry.

In addition to these cash prizes, the winning organizations or individuals also receive a free consultation from Baylor University#194;#146;s Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR). ISR will study the winners and offer their guidance for finding further program funding and increasing the ability of your organization to help more people, based on their extensive research in this area. ISR will also generate case studies on the winners, highlighting their award winning programs.

Operating under the moniker "Johnny Ramirez," the young officer had recently graduated from the Tulare-Kings Police Academy when he was recruited to go undercover by the local police chief. Many students were surprised to find that 'Johnny,' who had been a presence on campus since the school year began in September, wasn't just another Exeter student.

A 17-year-old senior told the Visalia Times-Delta: "I sat next to Johnny Ramirez in three classes. We really got to know each other. I can't believe it."

The Visalia Times-Delta reports that police are still looking for one student connected with the drug bust, who allegedly hadn't been to school in weeks. The student would make the 13th arrest by the undercover drug offical.

Although this is the first undercover operation to take place at Exeter Union High School, the same tactic has been used before at other schools in the Tulare County.

In an even more bizarre recent story of an undercover operation at a high school, a teenage boy fell in love with who he thought was a teenage girl at a South Florida high school. She was in fact an undercover cop posing as a student as part of a marijuana sting operation. And in the entertainment world, "21 Jump Street" -- a comedy starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as undercover bike cops involved in a high school drug bust -- comes out in theatres today.

The question in the title of this post is inspired in part by this recent story on MLB.com headlined "Pretrial motions filed in Clemens perjury case," and in part because I am about to spend the day thinking too much about the coming MLB season as I participate in my annual fantasy baseball team auction/draft.  Here are some basics, with a bit of sentencing spin:

Government prosecutors filed a number of pretrial motions Monday in preparation for the federal perjury trial of Roger Clemens, while the defense served notice it would not submit motions because any issues should have been resolved before the first attempt to try the former pitcher....

The retrial of Clemens will begin April 16 in Walton's courtroom at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.... In the first attempt to try Clemens last July, Walton declared a mistrial on the second day of testimony after the government showed inadmissible evidence to the jury.

Prior to that attempt to try Clemens, Walton ruled on several issues via pretrial motions from both sides -- including one ruling that an affidavit from Andy Pettitte's wife, Laura, saying she'd heard her husband tell her that he'd discussed with Clemens using performance-enhancing drugs could not come into evidence unless the defense attempted to attack Andy Pettitte's credibility. It was after the prosecution allowed that evidence before the jury that Walton granted a defense motion for mistrial....

The government ... pointed out several issues brought out during the defense's opening statement that they now say should not be allowed in the retrial, including the mention of possible penalties Clemens is facing, the fact that none of his baseball heroes ever took performance-enhancing drugs and statements that Clemens had given speeches to children about staying away from performance-enhancing drugs.

In reference to the prosecution's request that the previous trial be inadmissible, the government wrote, "At best, references to the prior trial only could foster confusion and sympathy" and that the government "respectfully requests that any prior trial testimony introduced at trial be referenced as testimony from a 'prior proceeding' and that the Court bar all other references to the previous trial."

Baseball fans know that Andy Pettitte is trying a comeback with the NY Yankees, and I do think this trial can and will be a distraction to Pettitte and perhaps to some other players who have connections to Clemens and the steroid controversies.  I doubt this reality will impact my on-going fantasy auction/draft much, but one never knows.  (Also, as always, I welcome comments with suggested sleepers to help me fill out my fantasy roster.)

As reported in this AP piece, a ruling by a federal district judge earlier this week "removed one of the two women on federal death row Friday, saying lawyers for the Iowa woman convicted in the 1993 execution-style murders of five people failed to present evidence about her troubled mental state that could have spared her from capital punishment."  Here are the basic details from a mega-ruling:

In a 448-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett threw out Angela Johnson's death sentence, saying her defense lawyers were "alarmingly dysfunctional" during the 2005 trial that made her the first woman to be sentenced to death in the federal system since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the punishment in 1976....

Bennett's ruling doesn't throw out her convictions   he said evidence of her guilt was overwhelming. Johnson and boyfriend Dustin Honken committed the murders to thwart a federal investigation that threatened to end Honken's reign as one of the Midwest's largest methamphetamine kingpins, and buried the bodies to cover them up.
After separate trials, jurors sentenced Honken to death for the two children's murders while Johnson was sentenced to death on four counts.... The bodies of the victims   drug dealers-turned-government witnesses Terry DeGeus and Greg Nicholson; Nicholson's girlfriend, Lori Duncan; and Duncan's daughters, Kandi, 10, and Amber, 6   were found in shallow graves near Mason City in 2000. They were discovered after Johnson, serving time on drug charges, sketched out a locator map to a jailhouse informant....

Bennett said that he understands his ruling will upset victims' families, but Johnson's defense was so riddled with missteps that her rights were violated. "I believe that I have done my duty, in light of what is required by the Constitution   the foundational document of our Nation's enduring freedoms, including the right not to be put to death when trial counsel's performance was so grossly constitutionally inadequate," he wrote.

During the penalty phase of Johnson's trial, Bennett said defense lawyers failed to present expert testimony about her mental health at the time of the murders that could have helped explain her involvement to jurors.  He said they should have presented evidence about the impact of serious brain impairments, personality disorders and her prior methamphetamine use.

Bennett said defense lawyers also failed to present evidence that could have undercut the prosecution's claim that she participated in DeGeus' killing out of revenge, because of their prior relationship's abusive nature.  He said they should have had experts argue she was suffering from battered woman's syndrome and wouldn't have wanted him dead....

Iowa does not have the death penalty, and Bennett said few lawyers in the state had expertise in capital punishment.  He said he tried to assemble "dream team" of lawyers for Johnson   including Alfred Willett, of Cedar Rapids; Patrick Berrigan of Kansas City, Mo.; and Dean Stowers of Des Moines   but they performed poorly. Willett and Berrigan didn't return messages Friday. Stowers agreed the defense team was dysfunctional. "I'm happy she's going to get a new shot at things because she deserves it," he said.

Bennett, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, has acknowledged his personal opposition to the death penalty.  In a 2006 speech about the two capital murder cases, he said he set aside his personal beliefs in the interest of fairness.  But he added he had "grave concerns" the death penalty could be applied unfairly.

The full 448-page opinion, which concludes by noting that the defendant prevailed "on only four of the sixty-four grounds that she asserted," can be accessed via this link.

Perspectives on the import and impact of Lafler and Frye

The New York Times yesterday published this effective piece, headlined "Stronger Hand for Judges in the  Bazaar  of Plea Deals," discussing the Supreme Court's important rulings this week in the Sixth Amendment rulings Lafler and Frye. Here are excerpts:

For years, the nation s highest court has devoted the majority of its criminal justice efforts to ensuring that defendants get a fair day in court and a fair sentence once a trial is concluded. But in two decisions on Wednesday, the Supreme Court tacitly acknowledged that it has been enforcing an image of the system that is very different from the real, workaday world inhabited by prosecutors and defense lawyers across the country.

In that world, 97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence.  Courtroom trials, the stuff of television dramas, almost never take place.

Ronald F. Wright, a professor of law at Wake Forest University, said that for generations plea bargains have been the rule rather than the exception, "and the Supreme Court has, until the last two or three years, found a way to ignore that." Professor Wright likened the court s decisions on Wednesday to "Rip Van Winkle waking up.  He looks around and says,  Wow, when I went to sleep the world was full of trials.  "...

Taken together, the rulings greatly expand the supervisory reach of judges to include plea bargaining, a process that has traditionally been conducted informally and with so little oversight that one law professor, Stephanos Bibas of the University of Pennsylvania, has compared it to a Turkish bazaar.

Reacting to the decisions, legal scholars on Thursday used words like "huge" and "bold" to describe them. "I can t think of another decision that s had any bigger impact than these two are going to have over the next few years," Professor Wright said.  Perhaps how bold was reflected in the intensity of Justice Antonin Scalia s scathing dissent, which excoriated the court for elevating the "necessary evil" of plea bargains into "a constitutional entitlement."

But what legal experts seemed to agree on was that it was difficult to gauge what concrete effects the rulings would have on everyday legal practice.  Professor Bibas said that they would probably lead to a flurry of postconviction filings by people who believed their lawyers were at fault for their failure to get a better deal.  "But very few of them will succeed," he said. "Courts are very good at tossing these cases out."

The rulings, he added, might also result in requirements that plea offers be put in writing   something that Justice Kennedy noted was already the case in Arizona.  While many states require plea agreements to be written and presented before a judge, plea offers are often verbal and made in informal settings.

More significant, Professor Bibas said, was the symbolic importance of the court recognizing the need for closer monitoring of pretrial negotiations.  "I m not a big fan of plea bargaining," he said, "but the least we can do is to clean up the messy way it s practiced."

However, Nancy King, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, worried that the court s rulings would distract states from more important issues.  "Ironically, by beefing up the resources devoted to postconviction litigation, the court may have actually made it more difficult for states to provide competent legal assistance to those indigent defendants who should never be convicted in the first place," she said....

Steve Banks, attorney in chief for the Legal Aid Society in New York, noted that in 15 states, including New York, prosecutors are not required to turn over their evidence or witness lists to the defense until just before trial, making it difficult for defense lawyers to properly assess the merits of a plea offer.  "Now that the Supreme Court has said that you are entitled to effective assistance at the plea-bargaining stage of the case," Mr. Banks said, "It s hard to imagine how prosecutors in states like New York, with antiquated discovery statutes, can continue to withhold critical information."

But one former prosecutor sided with Justice Scalia.  The implication of the decisions is that defendants should be rewarded with the lesser sentences afforded by plea bargains simply because "the squeezed economics of the system virtually demand that almost all cases be processed by watered-down negotiation rather than by trial," said William G. Otis, a former c Appellate Division chief at the United States attorney s office in the Eastern District of Virginia.  "That view of the system is perverse," Mr. Otis said, "a virtual tip of the hat to cynicism sailing under the flag of practicality."

March 23, 2012
Washington Post on March 21, 2012 released the following:

"By Associated Press

DETROIT   Attorneys for seven members of a Michigan-based militia charged with plotting to overthrow the government asked a judge to declare a mistrial Wednesday, claiming they should have been told earlier about a previous case handled by the FBI agent who infiltrated the group.

The defense attorneys found out only this week that agent Steve Haug was the FBI handler for a New Jersey man who was paid to collect information on white supremacists and hate groups, starting in 2003. The informant, Hal Turner, was a right-wing radio host and blogger who made threats against critics and public officials while on the FBI payroll.

Under federal law, the government is required to turn over material that could aid a defendant or impeach the credibility of a witness. William Swor, attorney for Hutaree militia leader David Stone, said prosecutors failed to meet their obligation.

Hateful, anti-government speech is a key part of the case against Stone and six other members of the militia, who are charged with conspiring to commit rebellion against the government, first by killing a police officer and then attacking the funeral. There was no slaying or attack.

Swor said the defense deserved to know sooner about Haug s past work with a controversial informant, even if the information would never have been used on cross-examination.

"We were cut off from a whole line of investigation," Swor told U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts.

Prosecutors denied any violation had occurred and said the information was not relevant. Roberts didn t immediately rule on the request for a mistrial.

Turner of North Bergen, N.J., had no role in the Michigan militia investigation.

He was an FBI informant for four years until 2007. In 2010, he was convicted of making threats against three federal judges in Illinois in retaliation for a decision supporting gun control. He is serving a 33-month prison sentence

The government was expected to rest its case Wednesday, but arguments about Haug s previous work lasted two hours. Prosecutors will try to finish Thursday. The trial started Feb. 13 and is expected to stretch into early April.

The final evidence of the day was video of a federal agent firing machine guns at a gun range. The weapons were seized when militia members were rounded up in March 2010."

"Federal agents released alleged gun trafficker Manuel Fabian Celis-Acosta to help them find two Mexican drug lords. But the two were secret FBI informants, emails show.

By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

Reporting from Washington  When the ATF made alleged gun trafficker Manuel Fabian Celis-Acosta its primary target in the ill-fated Fast and Furious investigation, it hoped he would lead the agency to two associates who were Mexican drug cartel members. The ATF even questioned and released him knowing that he was wanted by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

But those two drug lords were secretly serving as informants for the FBI along the Southwest border, newly obtained internal emails show. Had Celis-Acosta simply been held when he was arrested by theBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in May 2010, the investigation that led to the loss of hundreds of illegal guns and may have contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent could have been closed early.

Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau show that as far back as December 2009   five months before Celis-Acosta was detained and released at the border in a car carrying 74 live rounds of ammunition   ATF and DEA agents learned by chance that they were separately investigating the same man in the Arizona and Mexico border region.

ATF agents had placed a secret pole camera outside his Phoenix home to track his movements, and separately the DEA was operating a "wire room" to monitor live wiretap intercepts to follow him.

In May 2010, Celis-Acosta was briefly detained at the border in Lukeville, Ariz., and then released by Hope MacAllister, the chief ATF investigator on Fast and Furious, after he promised to cooperate with her.

The ATF had hoped he would lead them to two Mexican cartel members. But records show that after Celis-Acosta finally was arrested in February 2011, the ATF learned to its surprise that the two cartel members were secret FBI informants.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) are investigating Fast and Furious, which allowed illegal gun purchases in Arizona in hopes of tracking the weapons to Mexican drug cartel leaders. In a confidential memo to Republican committee members, Issa and Grassley said the ATF should have known the cartel members were informants and immediately shut down Fast and Furious.

"This means the entire goal of Fast and Furious   to target these two individuals and bring them to justice   was a failure," they wrote. The "lack of follow-through" by the various agencies, they said, typified "the serious management failures that occurred throughout all levels during Fast and Furious."

James Needles, a top ATF official in Arizona, told congressional investigators last year that it was very frustrating and a "major disappointment" to learn too late about the informants.

ATF officials declined to comment about the investigations because they are continuing.

But Adrian P. Fontes, a Phoenix attorney representing Celis-Acosta, who has pleaded not guilty, said he was concerned the federal agencies purposely did not share information.

"When one hand is not talking to the other, perhaps somebody is hiding something," he said. "Was this intentional?"

Emails and other records show that once the ATF and DEA realized they were both investigating Celis-Acosta, officials from both agencies met in December 2009 at the DEA field office in Phoenix.

It is unclear, however, whether MacAllister later told the DEA that she released Celis-Acosta in May 2010 and that he was headed into Mexico.

Her boss, David J. Voth, the ATF s group supervisor for Fast and Furious, told committee investigators that the ATF realized the Sinaloa cartel members were "national security assets," or FBI informants, only after Celis-Acosta was rearrested. He identified the informants as two brothers, and said, "We first learned when we went back and sorted out the facts.""

Miami-Dade Corrections

Paciello's mug shot from a recent DUI arrest.

Chris Paciello with business partner Ingrid Casares and Jennifer Lopez.

Tonight is his comeback party. Well, sort of. Officially, it's the debut of the Delano Hotel's restaurant Bianca, a high-priced, high-wattage South Beach Italian eatery. Unofficially, it's an event to welcome back onto the A-list a man whose life story is tabloid legend: An impossibly attractive young thug appeared from nowhere, captured the attention of the Miami Beach smart set, used those connections to build a nightlife empire, and then was brought down by a secret from his past.

Tonight is also a test. Can Paciello still lure bold-face names to his parties, something he was lionized for in glossy magazines and gossip columns during the 1990s? And it seems he is about to pass, because before long, celebrities arrive in dazzling spurts. There's Sammy Sosa, A-Rod, Mickey Rourke, Entourage actor Kevin Connelly, Diana Ross's son Evan, and a gaggle of supermodels including Jessica Stam and Selita Ebanks.

They dine against a backdrop of antique pillars and billowing curtains, while outside by the swimming pool, a trumpeter blows bland jazz on his horn. Also in attendance are '90s scene-makers such as property tycoon Thomas Kramer, luxury homebuilder Michael Capponi, and sycophant-to-the-stars Ingrid Casares; all are here to support their friend's improbable comeback.

Despite the six years he spent in the federal pen for the felony-murder of Staten Island housewife Judith Shemtov, Paciello has returned to reclaim his crown.

"Chris still has the magic touch that it takes to run the hippest place in town," says Kramer. "I'm glad he's back and kicking. like a big, happy family reunion."

Not so happy is Paciello's former family, La Cosa Nostra. His Hollywood friends and South Beach supporters mistakenly believe the Mob turncoat only informed on a handful of low-level thugs involved in the 1993 murder-robbery of homemaker Shemtov, who was brewing a cup of tea before taking a bullet in the head. Though he didn't pull the trigger, Paciello planned the robbery-gone-wrong and drove the getaway car.

But according to hundreds of pages of sealed court documents — including interviews he gave to his government handlers — that New Times obtained from a confidential source, Paciello's snitching to the FBI was far more extensive and damaging to the Mafia's interests than previously reported.

Between December 2000 and May 2001, the FBI met with the fallen club king eight times and conducted 15 hours of interviews. During those meetings, Paciello detailed not only his own criminal history, but those of dozens of his Mob colleagues.

Some of the secrets contained in the documents that the former Madonna flame divulged to FBI agent Gregory Massa include:

• A 1997 plot involving Paciello and Colombo crime family boss Alphonse Persico to try to kill a dissident Mafioso. Paciello secretly pleaded guilty and got off virtually scot-free.

• The 1994 kidnapping of a Staten Island businessman from an auto body repair shop by Paciello and a Bonanno family soldier.

• The million-dollar robbery of a Westminster Bank in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, that provided the start-up capital for Paciello's first Miami Beach nightclub.

• The burglary of more than 30 bank night safety boxes in four states by Paciello in alliance with members of a Bonanno-affiliated gang called the New Springville Boys.

Most significant, Paciello fingered two made members of the Bonanno family, which led ultimately to the takedown of almost the entire upper echelon of the organization, including family boss Joseph "Big Joe" Massino. This is something that even undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone, AKA Donnie Brasco (whose exploits were described in the eponymous 1997 movie starring Johnny Depp), never managed to achieve during his six years infiltrating the Bonanno family in the 1970s.

Paciello's cooperation with the federal government was "unprecedented," according to a March 2004 letter by his then-lawyer, Ben Brafman, to the court. Brafman estimated that "more than 70 people" had been "prosecuted directly and indirectly as a result of cooperation." This was largely confirmed in a subsequent letter sent by the U.S. District Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.

During Paciello's 2004 sentencing hearing at federal court in Brooklyn, Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Andres spelled out the important behind-the-scenes role Paciello had played in crime boss Massino's conviction. "Mr. ... provided us with information that led to the arrest and later cooperation of made members of the Bonanno crime family. Prior to December of 2002, had ever cooperated. In the last 14 months, we've arrested virtually ever criminal supervisor in the Bonanno family. Those prosecutions resulted in part from the cooperation of Mr. ."

Chris Paciello was born Christian Ludwigsen in Brooklyn's Borough Park in 1971. By his mid-teens, he had already embarked on a criminal career that earned him the admiring street name "The Binger." According to his 2005 testimony at the trial of bank robber Eddie Boyle, Paciello began stealing car radios at age 15 and graduated to cars at 16. By the time he reached his early 20s, he had progressed to bank robbery, home invasion, and kidnapping, not to mention supplying guns in a 1990s civil war among different factions within the Colombo family that left ten dead, including two innocent bystanders. From an early age, Paciello was a prolific moneymaker, something neighborhood Mob bosses quickly noticed.

In a "Dear Judge" letter that he penned for a 2004 sentencing hearing, the high school dropout cited his heroin-addicted dad as the reason he turned to crime: "My father, my role model as a child, left me, my two brothers, and my beautiful mother with nothing... I became the man of the house and this is where my criminal life began. I began to steal, rob, and do whatever I had to, to help me and my family survive."

Clockwise from top left: Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico, Anthony Graziano, Joseph "Big Joe" Massino, and William "Wild Bill" Cutolo.

During a May 2001 interview with the FBI, Paciello described how after his father departed, his family moved from Brooklyn to Staten Island. That's where he first met Lee D'Avanzo, the leader of the New Springville Boys, a ragtag group of wannabe wise guys whom the government would later characterize as a "farm team" for the Bonanno crime family.

D'Avanzo was a meaty tough guy with a cleft chin, piercing eyes, and jet-black hair. A cousin of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, he was the son of a car thief and loan shark who was killed in 1977 after trying to run down an FBI agent. (The younger D'Avanzo achieved notoriety last year as the husband of Drita D'Avanzo in the VH1 reality series Mob Wives.)

Paciello worked with a number of overlapping Mafia cliques in Brooklyn and Staten Island, but the members of D'Avanzo's crew, the New Springville Boys, were the nearest to being his real friends.

These relationships didn't prevent him from spilling the dirt to lawmen about the range of D'Avanzo's criminal activities, from ripping off banks' night deposit boxes to burglarizing stores to breaking into drug dealers' homes. Paciello also exposed D'Avanzo's loan-sharking operation; D'Avanzo once confided to him that he had as much as $100,000 on the street at any one time.

Wrote FBI agent Massa: "D'Avanzo always had guns. He would keep a shotgun next to his bed. Whenever needed a gun, D'Avanzo would provide one."

Sometime in fall 1992, one of D'Avanzo's buddies was picking up drugs on Richmond Terrace in Staten Island when he saw a group of men loading bales of marijuana into a U-Haul truck, according to the FBI documents. He called D'Avanzo and together they followed the truck to a secluded location in New Jersey. They then phoned Paciello, who headed over from the city, broke into the vehicle, and drove it away. When the trio arrived back in Staten Island and jimmied open the U-Haul, they could barely believe their eyes. It was literally a ton of marijuana.

Paciello sold his portion of the pot to a low-level mobster after placing a tracking device in the load. He then stole it back.

Word soon reached Bonanno Mob capo Anthony Graziano, a stocky, brutish man with a permanent smirk, about the huge haul. Soon Paciello was ordered to deliver $50,000 in a brown paper bag. (Documents that describe this incident only list Paciello as "source," but it is clear from the context that this is Paciello.)

According to the FBI report: " went to Graziano's house and met in the garage with Graziano. Graziano questioned about how much money had from the score. lied and said only $150,000. told Graziano that had used the money to purchase a home for his mother."

Graziano must have sensed a lie because he instructed one of his soldiers "to deal with this kid." The soldier pulled Paciello aside: "You want to be around for all the weddings, but none of the funerals," he reprimanded him. It was a thinly veiled threat.

Over the next six months, Paciello acknowledged to the FBI and federal prosecutors, he and the New Springville Boys pulled off several bank jobs. In one, a gangster strapped a fake bomb to his chest and walked into a bank, where he threatened to blow up the building if the tellers didn't give up the money. They did: $300,000.

In December 1992, Paciello helped stage a $360,000 robbery of a Chemical Bank branch in the Staten Island Mall. Fourteen months later, in February 1994, he teamed up with seasoned bank robber Eddie Boyle to take down a Westminster Bank in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. This heist was meticulously prepared, according to testimony Paciello gave at Boyle's 2005 trial. The future club owner cased the bank for a full month, watching the comings and goings of employees and clocking the exact time the armored car arrived to pick up money.

The morning of the robbery, an empty work van was parked six blocks away in case the robbers needed a place to hide. While Paciello waited outside in the "crash car," three masked accomplices entered the bank's basement through an adjoining laundromat and handcuffed two employees who were preparing the money for transport.

When Paciello saw the armored car approaching in his rearview mirror, he radioed his accomplices. They quickly burst out of the front door of the shuttered laundromat carrying two black garbage bags stuffed with bricks of money and drove off in a stolen SUV.

Paciello's job was to trail the getaway car, and if he spotted the police, to ram the pursuing vehicle with his Ford Explorer.

But the crew got away free and clear. The haul: a cool million dollars.

Imagine a soccer riot combined with a rave cross-pollinated with an episode of Jersey Shore and you'll get a good idea of the atmosphere at the Future Shock parties that filled New York's Limelight nightclub in the early 1990s. Outer-borough dwellers, mostly Italian-Americans, traveled to the club to experience a new sound that was all the rage at the time: techno, particularly the industrial strength variety imported from Belgium that sounded more like synthesized heavy metal than dance music.

They raged through the night, pumping their fists and swallowing copious amounts of ecstasy. Under the influence of the drug, they hugged each other close, swearing undying brotherhood. "It was Mob mentality dressed up like techno," said a Limelight doorman at the time.

The creator of these events — and the man who established the East Coast's first full-fledged rave scene — was Lord Michael, AKA Staten Island's Michael Caruso, the so-called "Al Capone of raves." Caruso had visited Britain in 1990 and witnessed firsthand the burgeoning rave scene there. Excited by what he had experienced, he came back to Staten Island with a crate full of acid house records, determined to replicate the scene in New York.

Caruso was a musical trailblazer who, at the climax of his parties, would descend from the DJ booth, throwing samples of high-grade MDMA into a crowd of adoring fans. Behind the scenes, however, this chunky techno promoter who sported gang tattoos crawling up his legs also led an armed crew of ecstasy bandits who robbed club kids and suburban candy ravers for their drugs, which Caruso would then later sell at the Limelight.

One of the young toughs the techno promoter relied on to protect his drug operation was Chris Paciello. "There were times when people made physical threats towards me," Caruso told DEA agents after he was arrested in 1997 for dealing ecstasy and cocaine, "and Chris would tell them, 'Anyone who comes near him, they're going to have to deal with me.'"

At the time, Paciello dressed like a budding professional boxer: jogging pants, muscle shirts, and gold chains. He was indistinguishable from the masked ranks of young Italian-Americans who flocked to Manhattan nightclubs except for one thing: He was drop-dead gorgeous. At the Limelight, Paciello glimpsed a glamorous life beyond suburban Staten Island. He stared out over the seething throng of club-goers and saw the way the thunderous music bound together gay and straight, black and white, drag queens and gangsters. He was impressed.

Flush with cash from the Westminster Bank robbery, he and Lord Michael decided to open a New York-style dance club in Miami Beach. Paciello's older brother, George Jr., had visited Miami Beach and returned with stories about a flourishing nightlife scene. The location for the new club would be a bar called Mickey's at 1203 Washington Ave. that was nominally co-owned by actor Mickey Rourke. Paciello would later testify that Mickey's was a front for the Gambino crime family. He decided to call his new club "Risk" because it was a dicey venture from the get-go.

"I was a big Guido from New York opening up a club," Paciello recalled in a late-1990s interview with Ocean Drive. "Everybody thought I would be out of business within a week."

On November 16, 1994, a 30-strong crew of junior-level Staten Island mobsters flew down to Miami Beach to celebrate the opening of Risk. The late, great raconteur and doorman, Gilbert Stafford, described the scene to me in a 2002 interview: "I thought they were just dressed up like mobsters; it wasn't until later that I found out they really were gangsters."

Paciello would later testify in court that the lease for the space cost him $450,000. The budding entrepreneur forked over $125,000 up front, paid an additional $15,000 a month, and agreed that if he failed to pay after two months, he would have to hand back the key to the Gambino family.

Springville Boys head honcho Lee D'Avanzo initially invested $40,000 in Risk but soon withdrew his stake in the club. Michael Caruso says that before D'Avanzo left Miami Beach, he warned Caruso about the people Paciello was doing business with: "Chris is involved with a bunch of sharks. I want nothing to do with this."

By then, Caruso was becoming increasingly worried about his partnership with Paciello, who sometimes behaved like a violent mad man. The revolving cast of bull-necked Mafiosi that paraded through the club for private meetings with Paciello — meetings from which Caruso was pointedly excluded — scared him.

In December 1994, a member of the New Springville Boys who had heard a rumor that Paciello was sleeping with the mobster's girlfriend flew down to South Beach to confront the newly minted club owner, only to find that Paciello was already in police custody, after the cops arrested him for stealing a doctor's car.

"Chris wanted to use my knowledge of the club scene and then kill me to take over my share of the club," Caruso recently told New Times. Caruso says he was so scared for his life that he skipped town in a hurry, not even bothering to pack his belongings.

By 1997, Paciello's relationship with Lee D'Avanzo had seriously soured. FBI agent Massa wrote after an interview on May 10, 2001: " stated that he didn't care much for D'Avanzo and that he became jealous of Paciello's success." Things had grown so bad between Paciello and the New Springfield Boys that D'Avanzo's friend Danny Costanza approached Bonanno captain Anthony Graziano and asked for permission to kill Paciello. Graziano refused, possibly thinking it was more profitable to keep the club owner alive now that he was making major money in Miami. It was a decision he would come to regret.

Paciello soon gave up the Mob capo to the feds, providing damaging details about a Florida pot business that subsequently led to Graziano's conviction for drug distribution. Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Andres wrote in a letter dated September 10, 2004: " provided detailed information that led to the indictment of Graziano for marijuana trafficking."

Eleven members of the New Springville Boys were eventually indicted, then convicted of bank robbery, loan sharking, and drug dealing based in large part on the inside dope that Paciello had given the FBI.

D'Avanzo was sentenced to 62 months in prison.

Chris Paciello's second Miami Beach nightclub, Liquid, debuted at 1439 Washington Ave. during Thanksgiving weekend 1995. The front of the club was illuminated by spotlights as if a Hollywood premiere were underway. Limousines stretched around the block. Madonna's brother, Christopher Ciccione, threw a birthday bash in the VIP room. Famous faces — David Geffen, Kate Moss, Calvin Klein, Naomi Campbell, Sean Penn — made the scene. The hype was so all-consuming that two hours before the opening, a hysterical mob besieged the front entrance in a scene straight out of Nathanael West's Day of the Locust. Such was the anger among those denied admittance that, at the end of the night, bouncers escorted some of the celebs to their cars.

"The South Beach equivalent of Truman Capote's Black-and-White Ball," a local gossip writer gushed.

The nightclub's star-studded debut established Liquid — named after liquid ketamine or Special K — as the hottest spot on the Beach, and it quickly became Madonna's favorite hangout. It also attracted a crowd of celebrities, which in turn attracted even bigger crowds of tourists.

But Paciello in 1996 was not the rube who had arrived two years before. His new business partner, Ingrid Casares, dramatically broadened his social circle to include jet-setters and celebrities like Madonna, Gloria Estefan, and Gianni Versace. Paciello wore his first-ever tuxedo for 1995's Make-A-Wish Foundation Ball. As I recounted in my book Clubland, when the time came to go home, Paciello couldn't think of anything to write in the guest book, so a socialite friend obliged: "I loved the lobster but I'm not a mobster," she wrote.

Before his untimely death in 2010, former Risk doorman Gilbert Stafford reminisced about the time he off-handedly asked Paciello: "Well, what did you do today?"

According to Stafford, Paciello beamed, "I played polo."

In early 1996, the new darling of the South Beach set got word that Colombo family underboss William "Wild Bill" Cutolo wanted to meet him, according to court documents. Given Wild Bill's fearsome reputation, it was an invitation the polo-playing tough guy dared not refuse. He flew to New York and Wild Bill notified him that he was now "on the record" with the Colombo crime family and would "have to start coming around to see me in Brooklyn." Paciello testified in court that he understood this to mean he was obligated to begin kicking money up the ladder to the Colombo family.

But there was a problem: Paciello was now caught in a dispute between the Gambinos, who had given him his start in the nightclub business, and the Colombo family, who were now recruiting him.

Enter Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico, the personable but deadly acting boss of the Colombo crime family. The handsome, well-dressed Persico was Mafia royalty. Fealty to the Colombo clan was part of his bloodline. His father was Carmine "The Snake" Persico, the former boss of the family. His uncle Alphonse was a former consigliere, his other uncle a captain.

Paciello was summoned to a meeting at a Brooklyn bakery with Persico and a representative from the opposing Gambino family. During the sit-down, an apprehensive Paciello told Persico that he would rather align himself with the Colombo family because that's where most of his friends belonged. Then Persico told the Gambino representative, "Everybody knows this guy; he's a respectful kid. He's a good kid. I don't want to hear later on that we have some problems, or he was disrespectful to someone because he's not like that."

Paciello and Persico immediately hit it off, according to the feds. After the New York sit-down, they would often meet for lunch when the Mob boss visited Miami. During Memorial Day Weekend in 1998, the Colombo don invited Paciello and Ingrid Casares to a party on his 55-foot speedboat, Lookin' Good. One time, the nightclub owner gave Persico a $5,000 Cartier watch as a birthday present.

During court testimony in 2006, Paciello described an incident in which he was nearly hit by a speeding car while crossing the street in Miami Beach. Paciello jumped in his SUV with Persico, chased the reckless driver, and drove his SUV into the back of the car, causing it to crash into a parked vehicle. "I was a little drunk," Paciello admitted. " just looked at me like I was stupid."

According to the new documents obtained by New Times, the FBI believed that Paciello, even though he was never a made member of any Mob outfit, had what one U.S. prosecutor called "a unique role" in the Colombo family. 

Paciello told the feds that after Wild Bill mysteriously disappeared in May 1999, Persico had taken over his lieutenant's loan-sharking operation. Paciello also implicated both men in a 1997 plot to murder former Colombo soldier Jerry "Green Eyes" Clemenza.

A drunken Jerry Green Eyes had called Wild Bill an "asshole," and Paciello had communicated this to Persico, who instructed him to track down the bigmouth. With a hit man in tow, Paciello located Jerry Green Eyes as he was leaving a New Jersey nightclub, but the pair eventually lost him in traffic.

In December 2000, Paciello pleaded guilty to helping locate Jerry Green Eyes for the Mob bosses. "I knew these individuals wanted to physically harm and possibly murder Jerry Green Eyes," Paciello confessed to the judge. "I agreed to contact these individuals if I learned of the whereabouts of Jerry Green Eyes for the purpose of maintaining my affiliation with the Colombo family and I did contact them."

He also pleaded guilty to two counts of money laundering ($100,000 and $65,000) linked to Liquid and another count of bank robbery for the million-dollar Westminster Bank job. The government quickly sealed the transcripts of the proceedings to protect their informant. New Times is the first to disclose their existence.

Of course, Paciello's guilty pleas were a mere formality since they would result in no extra prison time because of his cooperation deal with the government.

In 2001, Persico was hit with loan-sharking and racketeering charges. Paciello was scared to testify in open court against the fearsome Mob boss, but he had little choice given his agreement with the government. Lucky for Paciello, just before he took the witness stand, Persico pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2003 to 13 years in federal prison.

But Paciello wasn't done. He had one more name to give to the FBI: Dennis Peterson was a Staten Island lawyer with ties to the Colombo crime family who ran a loan-sharking business on the side. The Staten Island Advance reported in 2003 that at one point, Paciello had worked as muscle for Peterson, collecting loan-sharking debts in Miami.

According to a former business associate of Paciello's who declined to be named, Peterson had been like a father figure to the club owner. He had always been there to bail out the young thug when he got into trouble with the police as a kid. Paciello loathed his real father and Peterson filled the emotional void.

"Dennis loved Chris," says the source, who knew both men. "He treated him like a son."

Peterson was arrested in August 2002, following grand jury testimony by Paciello and others. Like Persico, he agreed to cop a plea. But on the night before he was to sign the documents, the blond, blue-eyed lawyer climbed onto the roof of the ten-story apartment building where he lived in the Grymes Hill section of Staten Island, lit a cigar, and jumped. He was 60 years old.

According to his daughter Lori Racioppo, there were factors besides the indictment that might have led to Peterson's suicide: a worsening heart condition, his perilous financial situation, and a messy divorce, for instance. "I knew my father was friends with Chris Paciello," she says, "but you have to understand that my father was a very private person and he never discussed those things with me."

At least one Paciello associate, who declined to give his name, blames Paciello's treachery. "Everybody on Staten Island liked Dennis. He was a nice guy. He wasn't a leg-breaker. What Chris did to him was a fucking disgrace."

Paciello has participated in many crimes, most of which he skated on because of his cooperation with the government. But the one he couldn't escape was the 1993 murder of 46-year-old Judith Shemtov, who lived in a luxurious house at 95 Meade Loop in Staten Island when she was killed. Paciello admitted to recruiting members of the Brooklyn-based Bath Avenue Crew to participate in the Shemtov robbery after he received a tip that Judith's husband, Sami, stored money from his string of porno stores in a safe at home. The home invasion went awry when one of the robbers accidentally discharged his gun into Shemtov's face.

Paciello's guilty plea in the Shemtov murder and six years in the federal penitentiary is well documented. Upon his release in September 2006, most observers of his career presumed he would vanish into the Witness Protection Program. The organized crime figures that he had helped put behind bars still had plenty of friends left on the street. 

But after a stint in Los Angeles, where he opened the trendy pizzeria Cristoni, which went bankrupt within the year, and following two of his trademark ultraviolent nightclub brawls (one in August 2008 with the now-indicted Hollywood cocaine kingpin Will Wright, the second two years later at the LA nightclub Voyeur, where he "took out a boatload of Samoan bouncers," according to Hollywood nightlife scribe Mark Ebner), Paciello is now back in Miami as a marketing consultant at the Delano Hotel, charged with guiding the deluxe hostelry's food and beverage operation.

Though his welcome was muted, within days of the news that he was moving to Miami, local supporters set up two Facebook pages — "The King Is Back" and "The Chris Paciello Fan Club." Not everyone was so gleeful, however: Last October, Casares, who was slated to partner with Paciello in his new venture, angrily tweeted to one of Paciello's former girlfriends, New York publicist Lizzie Grubman, "I turned down the Delano deal. Your ex thinks he's God."

For nearly six months after his arrival, Paciello managed to stay out of trouble and out of the headlines. Then, in the early hours of February 17, he was arrested by Miami Beach cops for DUI while driving a dark-colored Jaguar on a narrow street in a residential neighborhood at 80 mph. He could have easily killed somebody. Again.

Contacted by New Times, Paciello declined to answer specific questions for this story, but issued the following statement through the Delano's publicist: "I regret the mistakes I made in the past. I am working hard to make a positive impact and to build a new life for myself in Miami. I am grateful to the many people here who have welcomed me back with open arms, and look forward to a positive future."

The real puzzle of the whole story isn't why the Delano is employing Paciello. A criminal track record is hardly an obstacle to success in Miami Beach. The bigger mystery is why he seems so unconcerned about his own safety. It's not as if he's in hiding. Practically every day he goes to the same place to work out, the David Barton gym at the Perry South Beach.

"If someone feels they want to come after me and get revenge, then that's going to happen," he said in a 2008 interview when Ocean Drive's Jacquelynn D. Powers asked him if he worried about the possibility of reprisals. "I don't live my life in fear."

The most likely explanation for Paciello's equanimity is that he, more than most, realizes the contemporary Italian Mafia is a parody of its former self. These days, La Cosa Nostra's fabled ability to exact vengeance on informants is more a cinematic myth than reality. The old loyalties are gone, along with the old neighborhoods. Snitches and their families don't get stitches anymore; they get book contracts, reality TV shows, and movie deals.

"You can't trust a soul," says one erstwhile mainstay of the Staten Island criminal underworld, who became so disgusted with his fellow mobsters informing on each other that he quit the life, moved to South Florida, and got himself a straight job as a telemarketer. "Whatever happened to the oath of Omerta? It's like being a rat is accepted in criminal society.

"Chris isn't even going to get slapped for what he did," he adds. "It wouldn't surprise me if some of the same people he snitched on, when they get out of prison, stop by his restaurant to say hello."

Additional reporting by Lera Gavin.