Limone v. United States, 579 F.3d 79 (1st Cir. 2009)

First Circuit opinion of August 27, 2009 affirming Federal Tort Claims Act liability and damages of over $100 million in the suits arising from the 1968 Deegan murder convictions.

Date: 2009-08-27
Kind: court-opinion
Source: CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Docket: Nos. 08-1327, 08-1328
Rights: Opinion of a United States court. Works of the federal judiciary are in the public domain in the United States. The text was read on CourtListener.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit, August 27, 2009 (Selya, J.). The court affirmed the district court’s finding that the United States was liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and its damages awards of over $100,000,000, in suits brought by Peter Limone, Joseph Salvati and the estates of Enrico Tameleo and Louis Greco.

The court wrote: “The record evinces egregious governmental misconduct; the FBI agents responsible for handling Barboza exhibited a callous disregard for the scapegoats’ rights.” It records that Tameleo and Greco died in prison, and that “In due course, the convictions of all four men were vacated and Limone was released.”

itemLimone v. United States, 497 F. Supp. 2d 143 (D. Mass. 2007)Judge Gertner's findings of July 26, 2007, after a bench trial, that the 1968 convictions for the 1965 Deegan murder rested on Joseph Barboza's perjured testimony and that the FBI was liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act.itemEverything Secret Degenerates: The FBI's Use of Murderers as Informants, H. Rept. 108-414, vol. 1 (2004)Report of the House Committee on Government Reform on the FBI's use of Joseph Barboza, the Flemmi brothers and James Bulger as informants in Boston, with a long chronology. It quotes a 1967 Justice Department memorandum on the microphone at Raymond Patriarca's Providence office.