Opinion ID: 856630
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence at the Defendant’s Trial

Text: The evidence at the Defendant’s trial, which overwhelmingly established his guilt, is fully set forth in the District Court’s opinion. See Sessa, 2011 WL 256330, at -. We summarize here only the evidence that is relevant to the issues on appeal. Background testimony from Agent DeVecchio. Agent DeVecchio, the Government’s first trial witness, primarily testified as an expert witness on organized crime. The District Court cautioned the jury that his testimony was only background information. DeVecchio also testified that there was an ongoing internal power struggle in the Colombo Family and that the struggle resulted in several murders and other crimes. In two assertions that formed the foundation of the Defendant’s perjury claims in his Rule 33 motion, DeVecchio also asserted that (1) if one of his informants committed a crime, he would report that crime to the federal prosecutor, and (2) he had never gone to a prosecutor to ask that one of his informants be given preferential treatment in a pending criminal matter. -3- Evidence of Anthony Coluccio’s murder. The Defendant’s murder conviction resulted from the shooting death of Anthony Coluccio, a member of the Defendant’s crew. He was murdered in May 1989. The evidence showed that Coluccio was killed because the Defendant and other members of the Colombo Family became concerned that Coluccio had become a vulnerable member – someone whom the police could convince to cooperate – after he started using and selling drugs. The Defendant and Joseph Ambrosino, a member of the Defendant’s crew, were ordered to kill Coluccio by a higher authority in the Colombo Family. The evidence about the Defendant’s involvement in Coluccio’s murder came almost exclusively from Ambrosino, who, by the time of the Defendant’s trial, had agreed to cooperate with the Government. Ambrosino testified to the following: the Defendant arranged to have Coluccio meet him and Ambrosino in Brooklyn at 8:00 p.m. on May 16, 1989; he and the Defendant used a ruse to convince Coluccio to drive with them to Ambrosino’s home in Staten Island; when the three men were several blocks from his house, the Defendant, who was sitting in the back passenger seat of the car, shot Coluccio three times in the back of his head; Ambrosino and the Defendant left Coluccio’s body in the car and walked about a block to a getaway car driven by another Colombo Family member; and the Defendant threw the gun into a storm drain on Rockland Avenue. More than two years later, after Ambrosino agreed to cooperate with the Government, the FBI found the gun in the storm drain, where Ambrosino had directed them to look. -4-