He had and has excellent lawyers It was all based on what the judge allowed during pretrial hearings. Evangelista told prosecutors when Londonio allegedly confessed that he said "Stevie Wonder and son" ordered the hit (and that it was handed down from Crea/Madonna) and the judge right before the trial wasn't going to allow that statement into testimony but after "expert" John Carillo testified on the first day, judge changed her mind and allowed him to testify that that's what Londonio supposedly said. There was a lot of that kind of thing that happened in pretrial even with Madonna during trial...allowing only half recordings to be played (not whole recording for context), allowing witnesses like Robert Spinelli to "interpret" statements he made while he was making recordings (this in relation to other charges). But the murder charge for Crea was based entirely on that "Stevie Wonder and son' statement.

Plus, at the end of the trial the judge gave the jury a charge called Pinkerton rule where even if the jury didn't believe he had anything to do with the murder, if they could find he was a member of an enterprise or a club, they could find him guilty of the murder. It would have been a "foreseeable" event on his part. But there's so much more. So Crea's lawyers fought everything but they were overruled or denied on every motion and objection.

Even the original indictment when they were indicted on the information given to them by Frank Pasqua III who lied because his original information was that he had gone with his father to kill Meldish and that his father had done it, somehow he changed his story that it was Crea. But he was never called to testify because he lied about so many things and when Crea's lawyers asked for the Grand Jury minutes which is what got all of them indicted...the judge refused and ordered the government to get new "trial indictment". So no one will ever know what was in that original GJ indictment which probably would have had information that would have forced the whole thing to be dismissed.

Also interesting is that the entire case (discovery material and so forth) was put under a protective order by request of government almost immediately so there's no disclosure or transparency -- only what the govt presented during pretrial hearings/trial that wasn't sealed and was presented to jury.

All of it should be available to the public. If the government has nothing to hide, why put it under protective order?