# United States v. Salerno, 868 F.2d 524 (2d Cir. 1989)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/us-v-salerno-868-f2d-524/

Second Circuit opinion on the appeal from the Southern District of New York trial of Anthony Salerno and seven other defendants, decided January 31, 1989.

Argued September 9, 1987. Decided January 31, 1989. The opinion is by Mahoney, Circuit Judge. The appeal is from judgments of conviction entered in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Richard Owen, Judge, after an eleven-week jury trial.

The defendants-appellants named in the caption are Anthony Salerno, Carmine Persico, Gennaro Langella, Anthony Corallo, Salvatore Santoro, Ralph Scopo, Christopher Furnari, and Anthony Indelicato. Counsel for the appellee includes Rudolph W. Giuliani, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The opinion states that the RICO enterprise alleged in the indictment is an organization known as the "Commission" of La Cosa Nostra, and that the indictment alleged the Commission acted as a ruling body over the five La Cosa Nostra families in New York City. It states the government's proof of roles: Salerno as acting boss and then boss of the Genovese family; Corallo as boss of the Lucchese family, with Santoro as underboss and Furnari as consigliere; Persico as boss of the Colombo family and Langella as its underboss; Scopo as a member of that family; Indelicato as a member of the Bonanno family. Those are the Court's statements of what the indictment alleged and what the evidence established, not a chart drawn by this archive.

The Court affirmed, except that it reversed Indelicato's conviction on the substantive RICO count. The opinion also describes three schemes the indictment alleged, including the concrete-construction arrangement called the "Club," and the July 12, 1979 killing of Carmine Galante, Giuseppe Turano, and Leonard Coppola, charged as predicate acts against Indelicato.

This page does not restate the trial as a story. The opinion is the record.

## Sources

- Justia, reprinting the Second Circuit opinion: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/868/524/17202/