A mobster convicted of murdering a potential homicide witness four decades ago returned to the stand Monday, arguing his life sentence should be overturned because his lawyer misled him, and others who committed more vile crimes got a slap on the wrist. .
Stephen LoCurto, known in the Big Apple’s seedy underworld as “Stevie Blue,” told a federal judge in Brooklyn that he would have taken a plea deal during his 2006 trial if his lawyer hadn’t misled him about the amount of jail time. that he faced. .
“All these guys had two and three murders and received 10-year prison sentences!” the smiling 62-year-old killer told the judge, referring to other hunted killers who he claimed had more bodies than him.
But his former trial attorney, Harry Batchelder, never told him he faced life in prison, LoCurto said in his erratic and tortuous testimony.
The Bonanno crime family mobster said he believed he only faced 20 years in prison, or about the same as what the feds offered in his plea deal.
Batchelder should have grabbed him by the collar, shaken him and told him he was risking his life in prison by refusing the deal, LoCurto said.
Thinking the deal was no better than what he faced at trial, LoCurto said he told his attorney to tell prosecutors what they could do with the deal.
Stephen LoCurto of the Bonanno crime family is trying to have his life sentence overturned due to bad advice from his trial attorney.
“Didn’t you tell him [Assistant US Attorney] Greg Andres who could ‘wipe his ass’ with that letter? Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Roddin asked Sage on Monday.
“I said something in slang, I don’t really remember,” LoCurto responded.
Batchelder testified via Zoom that LoCurto’s story was wrong.
The attorney presented what he called a proposed plea to his client, who then told him he could “wipe my ass” with it.
“Steven insisted it wasn’t going to take 20 years,” Batchelder said. “He believed that he could testify on his own behalf and prevail at trial. I tried to explain to him that this case was different from the [an earlier state trial in which LoCurto was acquitted].”
LoCurto also later admitted that he had been given access to court documents that said he faced life in prison if convicted.
LoCutro was convicted of the racketeering-related murder in July 2006, when a jury determined that the 45-year-old Bonanno crime family soldier had shot Joseph Platia, a possible witness to a homicide, about two decades earlier. , according to the New York Times.
Federal authorities said at the time that the mob targeted Platia because mobsters thought he knew which Bonanno family mobsters had murdered and dismembered one of their friends, mob associate Robert Capasio.
Immediately after the Manhattan shooting, LoCurto was arrested a block away with the .38-caliber pistol still hot in his pocket, the Times said.
LoCurto told the court he had heard the gunshots and then came across Platia’s lifeless body slumped in a car with a gun next to him.
LoCurto claimed he took the gun and put it in his pocket to defend himself, the Times said.
The mobster has been fighting the conviction since it was decided, including an unsuccessful appeal in 2009, according to the Daily News.
Federal prosecutors have maintained that the 20-year plea was never a real deal, the Daily News said.
Batchelder confirmed this on Monday.
“I would call this a letter of proposal,” he testified. “They had 25 accused. “It was a proposed guilty plea.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn