By Jeremy Roebuck, Inquirer Staff Writer
Lawyers for former Philadelphia mob boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino said Monday that "the government is out of time" and urged a federal judge to halt prosecutors' efforts to put their client back behind bars for an alleged probation violation three years after his release from prison.
In a filing Monday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, attorneys Edwin J. Jacobs Jr. and Michael F. Myers said the 52-year-old ex-don had faithfully complied with all requirements of his postprison supervision and questioned prosecutors' efforts to incarcerate him just as the probationary term was set to end.
"For the last three years, Joseph has scrupulously abided by the conditions of his supervised release," the lawyers wrote. "Yet, on Sept. 2, 2014, the United States Probation Office obtained a signed violation petition . . . at the eleventh hour, only five days before the expiration of his three-year supervised release term."
They argue that because a summons for Merlino to appear in federal court in Philadelphia was not issued until Sept. 16, his probation had ended, and he should be free and clear.
The filing came days before Merlino, who now lives in Boca Raton, Fla., is set to return to Philadelphia for a probation revocation hearing.
Last month, his probation officers reported that Merlino violated his release terms in June with a night on the town with one of his former mob captains and two convicted felons.
Authorities in Broward County, Fla., conducted surveillance on what they described as a June 18 dinner involving Merlino and two ex-cons at an Italian restaurant in a Boca Raton strip mall.
The group departed for after-dinner drinks in the VIP area of the swank Havana Nights Cigar Bar & Lounge. In attendance, were John Ciancaglini, a mob captain convicted alongside Merlino in 2001; Brad Sirkin, a convicted fraudster and money launderer; and Frank Fiore, the cigar bar's owner, who has a record of his own.
In their filings Monday, Merlino's lawyers argued that the former mob boss did not know Ciancaglini was at the bar that night and said Fiore merely greeted Merlino, as he did with all of his customers.
Merlino's new hearing, scheduled for Friday, comes more than a decade after he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his conviction in a racketeering conspiracy case. Though he was charged with more than half a dozen shootings, including those of a video-poker operator who refused to pay street tax, a rival mob leader, and the brother of a witness in an earlier mob trial, jurors acquitted him on those counts.
Federal investigators have kept a close watch on his activities ever since.
In late 2011, they sent a wired mob turncoat to secretly record a conversation about the mob with Merlino at a Florida Dunkin' Donuts - an exchange, his lawyers said Monday, he dutifully reported to his probation officer at the time.