[quote=Lou_Para]The fact that Sammy only got the initial 5 year sentence shows how desperate the Feds were to nail Gotti.

Even if Sammy would have pulled the trigger on all 19,plus blew up a schoolbus,and kicked a puppy to death on the way home,this scumbag would have still basically copped a walk. Then he turns around and rubs their face in it with his Ecstasy ring.

After that I'm surprised that he didn't serve out the max.

On the bright side, even at his age he can still


Besides the conviction of Mr. Gotti, Mr. Gleeson cited Mr. Gravano's help in the case against Thomas Gambino, the son of the Gambino family's namesake, the late Carlo Gambino. A once powerful figure in the city's Garment District trucking business, with a reputation as a contributor to charity, Thomas Gambino was found guilty last year of racketeering charges that accused him of being a Gambino family captain.

The prosecutor also mentioned Victor J. Orena, acting boss of the Colombo family -- another of the five Mafia groups in New York City -- who was convicted of murder and racketeering in 1992. Mr. Gravano, Mr. Gleeson said, was also expected to provide vital testimony at the future proceedings in the murder and racketeering case against Vincent Gigante, reputed head of the Genovese crime family.


Below is the 5k1 letter to the Judge in 1994 for cooperating and to give him 5 years.

"What has made the Mafia so little understood and in many respects romanticized," I said, "is the cupidity of its victim which is society at large and the folk-hero proportions in which its leaders have been portrayed. They have been portrayed as Godfathers, as Teflon Dons, as neighborhood benefactors. The public hasn't fully understood the pernicious influence that organized crime has exerted and still exerts in countless ways that affect our daily lives." (Tr. 51-52)

The criminal history of Gravano was recounted as was the extensive assistance he provided to the United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs and its Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations[2] and to the government in the prosecution of significant criminals. In that regard the government wrote that he was "the most significant witness in the history of organized crime in the United States." (Tr. 60)

The criminal history of Salvatore Gravano was discussed by the government against the backdrop of La Cosa Nostra within which that history was made. Much of that history was revealed to the government for the first time and, but for his telling of it, would never have been known (Tr. 24). Much has been written about his involvement in 19 murders with respect to which "there are plenty of nuances." (Tr. 20) An appreciation and understanding of those "nuances" can be had only by a reading of the transcript of the testimony of Salvatore Gravano at the trial of John Gotti and Frank LoCascio which extended over many days.

On the day Gravano was to be sentenced there were "37 convictions, nine people awaiting trial, eight people resigned from the unions as a result of Gravano's cooperation." (Tr. 45) and the government recounted and explained the enormous significance of each to law enforcement and to society. I again quote from the government's presentation to the court: "What we have learned from the cooperation of Gravano, and this should have been no surprise to us, but in this instance it was a surprise to me and to those of us on the prosecution team, that organized crime's influences in the communities in this city in unbelievably vast." (Tr. 30
The government related the collateral impact of Gravano's cooperation upon people who came to testify against organized crime "influenced by the fact that Salvatore Gravano turned his back on the mob .... What we heard from informants, what we heard from the people who followed Gravano in to become a cooperating witness was that when Salvatore Gravano cooperated, it did not indicate that there was something wrong with Salvatore Gravano, but it indicated that there was something very wrong with the mob ..." (Tr. 47-48)

"The benefit to society has been the incarceration of major criminals; the disarray of organized crime families; the cleansing of corrupt labor unions; the impetus which his decision to cooperate has given to others to do the same and the beneficial consequences of the domino effect of that decision and many other benefits which, although not presently identifiable, are certain to follow." (Tr. 70)

Adverting to the benefits realized by society as a result of his cooperation, a series of questions were believed to provide a more focused assessment of that.


*282 "Would society be better served if he hadn't cooperated and John Gotti and the Gambino organized crime family continued undisturbed?

Would society be better served if he hadn't cooperated and the construction industry continued to be dominated by organized crime?

Would society be better served if he hadn't cooperated and organized crime's involvement in heroin trafficking were to continue undetected?

Would society be better served if he hadn't cooperated and it had never learned that juries were tampered with in major criminal cases so that that pernicious endeavor can continue?

Would society be better served if he hadn't cooperated and it had never learned of a mole in the New York Police Department who was undermining the efforts of conscientious police officers to combat organized crime?

Would society be better served if he hadn't cooperated and they never learned of the influence of organized crime over the carting industry; the garment center; the docks; the teamster's union; the longshoremen's union; the carpenter's union?

Those questions can be multiplied but the correct answers to each are hardly in doubt.

I am aware that in the balance must be placed Salvatore Gravano's criminal past. It is a past in which his participation in many murders has been acknowledged. I do not minimize those murders, even the murder of gangsters and criminals as all of them were, and not the murders of fortuitous and otherwise innocent victims. They were murders committed within the crooked parameters of organized crime and in a real sense were peculiar to that warped way of life.

The weights on each side of the balance are unique to this defendant and to this case. They don't lend themselves to a true balance. There has never been a defendant of his stature in organized crime who has made the leap that he has made from one social planet to another. There has never been a defendant whose impact upon organized crime and the suffocating hold of that criminal octopus upon industry and labor has been so important and so extensive.

Because this case is so unique, the traditional underpinnings of sentencing have neither meaning nor application. Incapacitation has no relevance. The countless experienced prosecutors and federal agents who have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with him over the past three years are unanimous in their belief that he no longer poses a threat to this or any other community. They are unanimous in the belief that he has irrevocably broken with his past and has committed himself totally in continuing to assist the government and its law enforcement agencies in any way that he may be called upon to do.

General deterrence is similarly inapposite. Because his stature in organized crime is so unique, it would be fatuous to believe that the sentence imposed would encourage others to emulate his past. His unprecedented decision to cooperate, has, rather, encouraged others to follow his lead and may, as a 28 year veteran of the FBI wrote in a letter I received just this morning, provide food for thought for those young people growing up in a neighborhood where the propensity for a life of crime is high and that they will look at him and realize it isn't worth it.

Having as carefully and as consciously as I have the ability to do attempted to heft those unique weights on either side, in consideration of the enormity of his criminal past, but also the enormity of the contributions in which his assistance has rendered to the government and to society at large, I am prepared to impose a sentence."