Witness Motives Doubted in Mob Trial

While the prosecutor and the defense lawyer for the reputed Philadelphia-South Jersey crime boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino differed on whether he ordered the killing of a Newark mobster, both gave less than flattering portrayals about two of the main witnesses against Merlino.

Both men, they told a federal jury Monday, are aging, longtime criminals who hope their testimony as government witnesses will allow them to die outside of prison.

Both former boss Ralph Natale, 68, and Peter "The Crumb" Caprio, 74, a member of the family's northern New Jersey faction, have pleaded guilty. Both have testified that Natale and Merlino commanded Caprio to kill Joseph Sodano, a "capo," or captain, for the family in North Jersey.

Merlino, 42, faces two charges, conspiracy and murder in aid of racketeering. He is already serving a 14-year sentence on a related 2001 racketeering conviction and faces life in prison if convicted in this trial, which is expected to last two months.

Sodano, of Montville, died because he was loyal to jailed boss John Stanfa and had not shown respect to the new boss, Ralph Natale, and then-underboss Merlino, Assistant U.S. Attorney V. Grady O'Malley said.

"The verdict came down on Joey Sodano: 'Bang him out.' Kill him," O'Malley said in his opening statement.

He showed the 12 jurors and four alternates a picture of the dead Sodano, slumped in a van.

Jurors will hear secret tapes made by the admitted gunman, Philip Casale Jr., conversing with his cohort about the Dec. 7, 1996, shooting in Newark, the prosecutor said.

"You will hear Casale and Caprio laughing about the murder of Joey Sodano," O'Malley said.

Natale will testify that he and Merlino ordered the hit because Sodano refused to meet with them in Philadelphia and share a portion of his criminal earnings, O'Malley said.

Merlino's attorney, Edwin Jacobs Jr., attacked the credibility of Natale and Caprio almost immediately upon addressing the jury.

"Mr. O'Malley assures you they'll tell the truth. You have to meet these guys to make that judgment," Jacobs said.

"Joey Merlino had absolutely nothing to do with the killing of Joe Sodano," Jacobs said.

Instead of evidence such as a weapon or fingerprints, or even Merlino's voice on a tape, Jacobs said, jurors will be asked to rely on people who are "arch-criminals, multiple murderers, people without consciences, drug dealers."

As one example, he noted how -- in just one of the murders that Caprio has admitted committing -- the victim was doused with acid and buried in the basement of Caprio's Newark social club.

U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise told the jurors and alternates that there had been a prior trial involving some of the facts in this case. But the nine women and seven men were not told of Merlino's racketeering conviction.

The judge has ordered that juror names be kept secret to protect them from possible intimidation.

In the 2001 trial in Philadelphia, Merlino was convicted of racketeering, but the jury found the allegation he had killed Sodano "not proven."

Merlino's lawyers invoked constitutional protection against double jeopardy to avoid another trial, but a federal appeals court found that a not proven verdict was not a unanimous verdict. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.

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