April 1, 2020

This article is based on various court documents and federal indictments relating to the October 2019 indictment of Joseph Amato and nineteen others, and was the result of a nine-month FBI investigation involving wiretaps and physical surveillance. Please note that as of this article’s publication, the defendants have not yet been found guilty of any crimes in the indictment.

 COVID-19: Amato crew fears for life, say lawyers.

It's probably safe to say that when Joey Amato was indicted on racketeering and extortion charges last October, he knew his stay in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center wouldn't be that much fun. Certainly not as much fun as it was back in 1993, when Amato and twenty other Colombo buddies sat atop the inmate totem pole, in their own private wing. With an Italians Only sign brazenly marking the entrance, prison guards and inmates alike kowtowed to the powerful group of co-defendants, who had been initially placed in their own wing so they could work together in their related legal cases.

Fast-forward twenty-seven years, the Colombo wing is a thing of the past. Assistant U.S. Attorney Pam Davis put an end to the short-lived social experiment by prison staff, and the days of Goodfellas-esque control of prisons was gone. Now, after prosecutors accused them of being members of a Staten Island-based Colombo family crew involved in loansharking and illegal gambling, Amato and his crew are down in the trenches with general population, and they want out. Attorneys for the Colombo captain and two loyal soldiers, Thomas "the Plumber" Scorcia and Danny "the Wig" Capaldo, have desperately sought their clients' pre-trial release, arguing that the three men could be dead before they even get a chance to go to trial and vindicate themselves. And while wiseguys have a history of using pre-existing medical conditions to buy sympathy points with judges, the attorneys have presented stacks of evidence establishing that the threat of COVID-19 among inmates is not unfounded.

 Joey Amato Senior, 61, who prosecutors have accused of authorizing his crew's shakedown of independent bookmakers, was the first to present his case to Judge I. Leo Glasser, noting that his life-long respiratory and asthmatic issues placed him "in a high-risk category as determined by the WHO." His attorney, Scott Leemon, filed the letter on March 19, adding that he feared it might already be too late. Leemon said Amato, whose last conviction is for a 1995 botched Mafia hit, had informed him the night before that he was becoming symptomatic. Already on an inhaler, Amato reported that he "has a cough and is wheezing," and that the emergency button in his cell was a dud. His request to see the prison's physicians fell on deaf ears, and Leemon insisted that even before the outbreak, the MDC was woefully understaffed.
"It is important to note, that early in the year, Mr. Amato was ill and despite myself and AUSA Geddes reaching out to the jail to get him treatment, it took days to get him evaluated. The only reason he was seen by a doctor was because a member of his unit team noticed he hadn't left his cell for days and took him to the medical unit."

Leemon said Amato wasn't picky. He would "agree to any and all reasonable conditions that would be placed upon him should he be released from custody." Leemon added stacks of news reports to supplement his case, including Mayor Bill de Blasio's own plan to release "vulnerable" inmates from city jails after a corrections officer and an inmate both tested positive for the virus. But that might not be so easy.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Liz Geddes' reply can only be described succinctly as "So what?" She said that with-or-without COVID-19, Amato still posed a danger to the community if he were to be released on bail, and should be incarcerated for the same reasons she outlined in October 2019. She drew a parallel between Amato and another Colombo captain, Greg Scarpa, who was terminally ill with AIDS and was not expected to survive his 1994 trial. She said despite Scarpa's medical death sentence, release was only conditioned "on the defendant being confined to a hospital under 24-hour guard of the United States Marshal Service, to be reimbursed by the defendant's family." What Geddes failed to mention is that Scarpa was facing the music for a lifetime of murder and deceit, as a Colombo family powerhouse who swapped secrets with the FBI in exchange for turning a blind eye to dozens of grisly murders. Amato, on the other hand, is only charged with one act of violence: leaving a Lucchese associate requiring stitches in 2014 over a dispute with his son, Joseph Junior.

Geddes also noted that Amato was housed "in a two-man cell with access to hot water and soap at all times," and that he was, in fact, seen by a healthcare provider that same day.
"According to counsel for the MDC, Amato appeared to be in good spirits and voiced no complaints," despite his vocal complaints to Judge I. Leo Glasser that very day. And despite experts describing prison conditions as a "petri dish" for the virus to spread, Geddes was confident that the quarantine measures in place - the suspension of all visitation and inmate movements, the screening of new inmates for fevers, and new social distancing orders - ensured the safety of the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention center which, itself, had no confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the time of her letter.

Judge Glasser was equally confident that prison & courtroom officials could contain the spread of the virus, and that there was no need for Amato to be removed from the cesspool of inmates into his Colts Neck, New Jersey home to self-isolate as he awaited trial. The 95-year-old Judge Glasser made this decision, of course, while he was self-isolating at home, as the entire courtroom proceeding was made through video call. It's unknown if the irony of this was lost on either Glasser or the prosecution.

The very next day, CBS News reported that one inmate and two officials at the facility had just tested positive for the virus, and Amato's right-hand-man Thomas Scorcia, 52, tried his shot at pre-trial release. Unlike Amato, Scorcia wasn't charged with committing a single act of violence in the indictment, aside from threats and bluster he made over the phone. In fact, Scorcia's attorney has maintained that his client has not had any skirmishes with the law prior to last year's accusations, not even so much as a speeding ticket. In a letter filed on March 23, attorney Vincent J. Romano said Liz Geddes' main argument against Amato's release no longer held weight, given that outbreak within the prison was now a reality. He also scoffed at the assertion that Amato's access to hot soap and water was a viable precaution, given that he was housed a two-man cell, in the middle of the prison's general population.
"The prosecution's prior suggestion that the threat to the inmate population at the MDC is mitigated at this time, defies both reality and the fact that all experts have reported that this pandemic has grown exponentially each day - leaving all in the prison population at a greater vulnerability."
"The Government's (inaccurate) viewpoint that unlimited access to soap and hot water will overwhelm this highly contagious, airborne virus that has managed to spread over the entire world, is dubious." Romano also had the same "Huh?" moment we did when he read the government's citation of Greg Scarpa's case.
"(T)he Government's attempt to use the case of Gregory Scarpa... is misplaced. Indeed, Gregory Scarpa is likely one of the most duplicitous and treacherous killers to have ever been prosecuted in federal court - and most of his killings were while Scarpa served as an FBI informant... Thus, the fact that a serial killer, like Scarpa ever made bail (on any case), only supports that bail must be granted here (during the global pandemic), as it has yet to even be shown that Mr. Scorcia committed any acts of violence." 

The third incarcerated member of Amato's crew, Danny Capaldo, filed his motion for bail just as Judge Glasser swiftly denied Thomas Scorcia's. In the four days that had passed, the situation at the prison had continued to worsen. Capaldo's attorney, Peter Guadagnino, threw some hard-hitting statistics at the court that proved New York prisons, unsurprisingly, were faring just as bad as the rest of the city. On March 20, the day that Judge Glasser shot down Amato's request for bail, "the New York City Department of Correction announced that one inmate and several staff members in the city jails had been diagnosed with coronavirus." The following day, the day that Scorcia filed his motion, "it became clear that no fewer than 38 people have tested positive." The results came amid Liz Geddes' and Judge Glasser's assurances that soap and hot water would protect the defendants.

Attorney Guadagnino also raised questions as to where Elizabeth Geddes was receiving her COVID-19 hygiene advice, noting that "hot water and soap" was a pretty far cry from even the Centre of Disease Control's most basic recommendations.
"Maintaining six feet of distance from other inmates is all but impossible in a correctional facility where most individuals, including Daniel Capaldo, are double-bunked in a single cell, sharing a toilet and sink with a cellmate and a common shower with at least sixteen other people. In the days since March 13, the MDC has issued hand soap to inmates in Mr. Capaldo's housing unit only two times. Because commissary is currently closed, this soap must be used not only for handwashing, but also for showers and washing clothing; no one is allowed to purchase additional shop."  

The prison had its own self-isolation measures, Guadagnino said, but they certainly weren't the self-isolation measures enjoyed by the judge and the prosecution.
"Only if an inmate self-reports symptoms will they be screened for the virus. If symptomatic, the inmate will be 'isolated' in their cell, exposing their cellmate to risk." Those self-isolation measures also stripped away any remaining communication with the outside world. As mentioned before, all visits to the prison - for family, friends and attorneys alike - had been suspended, with prisoners being given 200 extra minutes on the phone.
"But with the extra phone time comes swarms of crowds," noted the attorney. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the public prison phones, which "remain in constant use and are poorly cleaned," created even more avenues for the virus to spread. 

Ultimately, the facts in Judge Glasser's mind that made him soften his approach to Capaldo, and authorize his pre-trial release, were based on the portly mobster's lifelong medical conditions, which included osteoporosis, a previous bout with pneumonia, and mild asthma. It might have also been influenced by a scathing review of the Metropolitan Detention Centre that was attached in Capaldo's motion, which bullet-pointed every hole in the prison's protection against the virus, noting that inmates still ate in large groups, laughable screening measures for new inmates, and no screening at all for the prison staff. On March 30, Glasser granted Capaldo's motion against the argument of Liz Geddes, who was still actively pushing for the aging wiseguys to dwell behind bars.

We're not sure what Capaldo's been getting up to on his home detention, but business is reportedly dry on the streets. Police are ensuring that the lockdown won't create a rise of illegal speakeasies, and they've already raided an unlicensed bar & gambling den in Gravesend for scoffing isolation orders. As the COVID-19 crisis worsens, it will be interesting to see how New York's smallest Mafia family fares, and whether there will be anything waiting for Joey Amato and his crew if and when they're ever released.