11/20/01
Feds Want 'Bull' Penned For 20-Yr. Max.
By AL GUART and ANDY GELLER, New York Post

November 2001 -- EXCLUSIVE
NY Post

The feds want a judge to throw the book at mob turncoat Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano and put him away for the maximum of 20 years for running a major "ecstasy" ring, The Post has learned. The stoolie who put mob boss John Gotti behind bars for life faces 12 to 15 years behind bars for operating the ring, which was based in Arizona but got its drugs from the Big Apple.

But Brooklyn federal prosecutor Linda Lacewell says Gravano deserves the max because he failed to take advantage of the sweet deal he got for testifying against the Dapper Don - five years for committing 19 murders. "Gravano received a second chance of a lifetime and squandered it," Lacewell says in a sentencing memo to federal Judge Allyne Ross.

"There could be no surer mark of a hard-core recidivist." If Ross follows the recommendation, Gravano, now 56, will be 76 when he walks out of prison. Last summer, Gravano pleaded guilty in both Phoenix and Brooklyn to running the ring - which raked in profit! s of $500,000 a week - along with his son Gerard, 25, other family members and mobsters.

Since August, he has been secretly held at the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan. In her memo, Lacewell noted that on Sept. 26, 1994, Gravano was sentenced to five years in the slammer and three years of supervised release in return for testifying against Gotti.

With credit for time served and good behavior, Gravano was a free man in March 1998. "Barely six months later, he decided to take over his son's drug-trafficking operation, which he then transformed into a large-scale wholesale operation and ran as an attempted monopoly," Lacewell charges. "His willingness to commit serious new crimes shortly after receiving this leniency shows that the risk of recidivism is high."

In addition, Lacewell says, Gravano continued running the ring even when he learned the government planned to call him as a key witness in a major jury-tampering case. "Gravano was willing to lead this double! life even when dealing directly with the government, which further shows his lack of respect for the criminal justice system and his boldness in committing crime," she says.

Gravano's lawyer, Lynne Stewart, did not return calls for comment, but defense attorneys are expected to argue Gravano does deserve leniency for his past assistance to the feds. "That's a question I don't think anyone can answer but the judge," one lawyer said.