Compensation at least... but not Justice

Forty-two years after they were wrongfully convicted of a murder that the FBI knew Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone had not committed, a federal judge has ordered the government to pay more than 101 million dollars to Salvati, Limone and the estates of Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco.

Salvati, Limone, Tameleo and Greco were convicted of the 1965 murder of Edward Deegan, which FBI officials knew at the time was actually committed by one of their own informants, but allowed the prosecution to continue in order to protect their informant. And then they dragged their feet for decades in admitting it, in order to cover up the fact that they'd let four innocent men go to prison.

Tameleo and Greco died in prison. Salvati served 29 years before his sentence was commuted. Limone served 33 years before he was freed in 2001.

Salvati and Limone were exonerated in 2001 after FBI memos dating back to the Deegan case surfaced, showing the men had been framed by Barboza. The memos were made public during a Justice Department task force probe of the FBI's relationship with gangsters and FBI informants James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "the Rifleman" Flemmi.

Now, six years after that, Limone, Salvati, and the families of Tameleo and Greco have finally succeeded in their malicious prosecution suit against the government.

The FBI encouraged perjury, helped frame the four men and withheld for more than three decades information that could have cleared them, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said in issuing her ruling Thursday.

She called the government's argument that the FBI had no duty to get involved in the state case "absurd."

This is not justice. Justice would be putting the FBI agents involved in this case in the same cell they consigned Tameleo and Greco to death in, and leaving them there to rot. At the least, though, 101 million split four ways is some form of compensation.

In other news, Mark O'Hara, of Tampa, Florida, was released from prison this week. He was serving a 25 year drug-trafficking sentence for possession of 58 vicodin pills that the prosecutors acknowledge he wasn't selling, and that he had a valid prescription for. Nonetheless, they charged him with trafficking, and apparently refused to allow the fact that he had a legal prescription for the drug as a defense. According to the prosecutors, the mere possession of the pills constitued drug trafficking. He served 2 years of the sentence before an appeals court ordered a new trial for him, with a decision using words like "absurd" and "ridiculous" to describe the state's position, rightfully pointing out that under their theory, simply walking out of a drugstore with a prescription you've filled makes you a criminal. But hey, at least it only took 2 years instead of 33 in prison before he got any sort of relief.