Record
Court opinion
2011-01-12
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
United States v. Basciano, 763 F. Supp. 2d 303 (E.D.N.Y. 2011)
Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis rules on Vincent Basciano's pretrial motions in the capital case over the killing of Randolph Pizzolo. The opinion quotes the court's earlier finding that "Joseph Massino, the then-head of the Bonanno crime family, agreed to become a government informant and taped conversations in prison that he had with Basciano."
- Date
- 2011-01-12
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- 05-CR-060 (NGG)
- 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 District Court, Eastern District of New York, 05-CR-060 (NGG), January 2011 (the CourtListener header gives January 12, 2011). The court calls this prosecution “Basciano II.” “In the current operative indictment, the S-9 Indictment, Basciano is charged with numerous criminal acts arising from his actions as the ‘acting boss’ of the Bonanno organized crime family.” That is the indictment’s charge. Counts Three and Four charged him with conspiring to murder and murdering Randolph Pizzolo in aid of racketeering. “Pizzolo was killed on or about November 30, 2004.” The government had filed notice that it would seek the death penalty.
The opinion recounts the earlier case, “Basciano I,” No. 03-CR-929: “Basciano was twice tried and convicted by jury.” The second jury found him guilty of substantive racketeering, with predicate acts that included “solicitation to murder Salvatore Vitale and Dominick Martino, and conspiring to murder and murdering of Frank Santoro.” “On April 7, 2008, the court entered judgment against Basciano, sentencing him to a term of life imprisonment.”
On the recordings, the court quotes its earlier findings: “While in prison awaiting trial in [Basciano I] and after being found guilty in a prior case before this court, Joseph Massino, the then-head of the Bonanno crime family, agreed to become a government informant and taped conversations in prison that he had with Basciano.” “Joseph Massino recorded two January 2005 conversations he had with Basciano in the Metropolitan Detention Center, where they both were held awaiting trial.” The court denied suppression of those recordings and of Massino’s testimony about two earlier, unrecorded conversations.
The opinion also discusses a handwritten list of five names, among them the judge and a prosecutor, found in 2006. “The Government asserts that the List was a hit list.” “Basciano claims that it was a ‘Santería’ list.” Both positions are stated as the court records them; the opinion does not resolve the question.