jonnynonos - I mistakenly stated in an earlier post that the govt had "a mountain of evidence" against Lombardo. They did not. All I've found is the fingerprint. I think I saw the Justice Dept's display, which is probably posted on this board, and concluded there was a lot of evidence. Having a lot of physical evidence and attaching that evidence to a specific individual can prove to be very challenging.
Also, I listened (online) to the oral arguments relative to the appeal of these guys before the 7th Court Of Appeals. The govt's presentation was not very strong (imo). I wonder if the prosecution felt the decision would probably be 2 to 1 with Posner and Sykes upholding the District Court's decision and judge Wood voting to overturn the conviction of Marcello and Calabrese citing double jeopardy as the reason? Of course that's exactly what happened.
I emailed Jeff Coen about the possibility of an appeal and he indicated it was not likely.
Who knows?
I agree. Have you ever been on a jury? It's not nearly as cut and dried as people think. It really comes down to a judgement call.
I was on a jury for a corrupt cop and we voted to convict and the judge came back afterward and said that basically we had made the wrong decision, probably, legally, but that it was still a good decision, more or less, as the guy was indeed corrupt. But the evidence was not what it really should have been. But, in aggregate, it was pretty clear the guy was corrupt.
John Binder put it this way, "...in this case the jury believed Nick Calabrese."
And that is pretty much what it boils down to, I suppose.
