Maxi Trial
Encyclopedia
The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily
during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia
activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant. The success of the trial drew other former Mafia members to testify against their former associates. This ultimately resulted in the shutting down of a significant percentage of Mafia-driven narcotics-trafficking and greatly damaged the alliances between Sicilian and American families.
politician Pio La Torre
. The law only came into effect two years later - after La Torre had been gunned down for making that very suggestion.
During the early 1980s, the Second Mafia War
had raged as Corleonesi boss Salvatore Riina
decimated other Mafia Families, resulting in hundreds of murders, including several high-profile authority figures such as Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
, head of counter-terrorism who had arrested Red Brigades
founders in 1974. The increasing public revulsion at the killing spree gave the necessary momentum for magistrates like Giovanni Falcone
and Paolo Borsellino
to try to deliver a serious blow to the far-reaching criminal organization on the island.
The groundwork for the Maxi Trial was done at the preliminary investigative phase by Palermo's Antimafia Pool, created by judge Rocco Chinnici
and consisting of Falcone, Borsellino, Giuseppe Di Lello and Leonardo Guarnotta. After Chinnici’s murder in July 1983, his successor Antonino Caponnetto
, headed the pool. The Antimafia pool was a group of investigating magistrates who closely worked together sharing information on related cases to diffuse responsibility and to prevent one person from becoming the sole institutional memory and solitary target.
as they were fugitives and still on the run (Salvatore Riina was one of these absent defendants.)
Amongst those present were Luciano Leggio
, Riina's predecessor, who acted as his own lawyer, and also Giuseppe "Pippo" Calò
and Michele Greco
(the latter was the uncle of the infamous mass-killer Pino Greco).
The Maxi trial took place next to the Ucciardone (the Palermo
prison) in a bunker specially designed and built to try the defendants. It was a large octagonal building made from reinforced concrete
that was able to prevent rocket attacks; inside there were cages built into the green walls holding the many defendants in large groups. There were over six-hundred members of the press as well as many carabinieri
wielding machine guns and a 24-hour air defense system keeping an eye on the defendants and would-be attackers attempting to thwart the efforts.
, drug trafficking, extortion
and, of course, the new law that made it an offence to be a member of the Mafia, the first time that law would be put to the test.
Judge Giordano won a lot of praise for remaining patient and fair during such a mammoth case with so many defendants. Some of the defendants indulged in disruptive and rather alarming behaviour, such as one who literally stapled his mouth shut to signify his refusal to talk, another who feigned madness by frequently screaming and fighting with guards even when he was in a straitjacket
and one who threatened to cut his own throat if a statement of his was not read out to the court.
Most of the crucial evidence came from Tommaso Buscetta
a Mafioso captured in 1982 in Brazil
, where he had fled two-years previously after escaping while on day release during a prison sentence for double-murder. He had lost many relatives during the Mafia war, including two sons, as well as many Mafiosi allies such as Stefano Bontade
and Salvatore Inzerillo
, and so had decided to cooperate with the Sicilian magistrates. The Corleonesi continued its vendetta against Buscetta by killing several more of his relatives. Testifying against the Corleonesi was the only way he had left of avenging his murdered family and friends.
Some evidence was also presented posthumously from Leonardo Vitale
. Although Buscetta is widely regarded as the first of the pentiti (and was certainly the first to be taken seriously), back in 1973, 32-year-old Leonardo Vitale had turned himself in at a Palermo police station and confessed to being in the Mafia. He said he had committed many crimes for them, including two murders. He said he had been having a 'spiritual crisis' and felt remorse. However, his information was largely ignored because his unusual behaviour, such as self mutilation as a form of personal penitence, lead to many to regard him as being mentally ill and his detailed confessions therefore unworthy of being taken seriously. The only Mafiosi convicted by his testimony were Vitale himself and his Uncle. Vitale was held in a mental asylum then released in June 1984; six-months later he was shot dead.
There were many critics of the Maxi Trial. Some implied that the defendants were being victimized as part of some sort of vendetta of the magistrates. The Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia
said that: "There is nothing better for getting ahead in the magistracy than taking part in Mafia trials." Cardinal
Pappalardo of the Catholic Church gave a controversial interview where he said that the Maxi Trial was "an oppressive show" and stated that abortion
killed more people than the Mafia.
Other critics suggested that the word of informants - primarily Buscetta - was not the ideal way to judge other people, as even an informant who has truly repented is still a former criminal, liar and murderer and may still have a vested interest in modifying their testimony to suit their needs or even settle vendettas. It was also said that such a huge trial with so many defendants was not making allowances for the individuals, an attempt to "deliver justice in bulk" as one journalist put it.
The information that Buscetta gave judges Falcone and Borsellino was highly important, and was termed 'The Buscetta Theorem', in that the believability of his claims of the existence of the Mafia was central to the case. Buscetta gave a new understanding to how the Mafia functioned and how the clandestine groups of hierarchy in the Sicilian Cupola (the Sicilian Mafia Commission
) actually agreed on policy and business. For the first time the Mafia had been prosecuted as an entity rather than a collection of individual crimes.
Of the 474 defendants - both those present and those tried in absentia - 360 were convicted.
2,665 years of prison sentences were shared out between the guilty, not including the life sentences
handed to the nineteen leading Mafia bosses and killers, including Michele Greco
, Giuseppe Marchese
and - in absentia - Salvatore Riina
, Giuseppe Lucchese
and Bernardo Provenzano
.
A number of those convicted in absentia were, unknown to the judiciary, deceased by the time of the verdicts. They included Filippo Marchese
, Rosario Riccobono
and Giuseppe Greco
. Additionally Mario Prestifilippo
was also on trial in absentia, but he was found shot dead in the streets while proceedings were still taking place.
A total of 114 defendants were acquitted, including Luciano Leggio
, who had been charged with helping to run the Corleonesi Mafia Family
from behind bars and for ordering the murder of Cesare Terranova
, who had prosecuted him back in 1970. The jury decided there was not enough evidence. It made little difference to Leggio's position though; he was already serving a sentence of life imprisonment
for a prior conviction for murder and remained behind bars until his death six years later.
The significant number of acquittals did manage to silence some of the critics who had believed that it was a show trial
whereby nearly everyone would be convicted.
Of those who were acquitted, eighteen were later murdered by the Mafia, including one, Antoninio Ciulla, who was shot dead within an hour of being released as he drove home for a celebratory party.
, a judge in the pay of the Mafia who was handed control over most of the appeals by the corrupt politician Salvatore Lima
.
Carnevale was eventually nicknamed l'ammazza-sentenze - "The Sentence Killer" - because of his tendency to overturn Mafia convictions for trivial reasons. He threw out some drug-trafficking convictions, for example, because wiretapped
conversations presented as evidence referred to the moving of "shirts" and "suits" instead of narcotics, even though it was well known that these were the codenames the members of that particular drug-ring employed for narcotics. He also released one Mafioso, who had been convicted of murder, on the grounds of ill-health. Despite being supposedly at death's door, the mobster immediately fled to Brazil with his illicit fortune and his family.
By 1989, only 60 defendants remained behind bars, and many were not exactly doing hard-time, with several residing in prison hospitals and taking it easy while malingering
with phantom illnesses. One convicted Mafioso had a private hospital ward to himself and had several common (non-Mafiosi) criminals as his servants, supposedly while suffering from a brain tumor
that, suspiciously, did not show any symptoms whatsoever.
Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino complained about these events but found it hard to be taken seriously as, so it seemed, the state's anti-Mafia crusade lost momentum and their opinions went largely unheard. One informer later said that the Mafia tolerated the Maxi Trials because they assumed those convicted would soon be quietly released once the public had lost interest, and the Mafia could continue with business as usual. It seemed, for a while, that they were correct in this assumption.
That summer, Falcone and Borsellino were murdered in audacious bomb attacks. This resulted in public revulsion and a major crackdown against the Mafia that seriously weakened the organization.
Salvatore Riina was eventually captured, as were other Mafiosi like Giovanni Brusca
. Corrado Carnevale, the "Sentence Killer", was sacked and imprisoned for being in league with the Mafia. However he was acquitted by the Corte di cassazione on 30 October 2002 and admitted in 2007 to work again as judge. Salvatore Lima would have probably faced a similar fate but he was murdered in 1992 for not preventing the reversal of the appeals at the start of that year.
Whether the Maxi Trial was a success or not is impossible to judge without taking into account subsequent events. The trial's primary success, at its very outset, was in holding the Mafia as an organization into account for its activities rather than just its individual members for isolated crimes (this approach was personified in the United States
via the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
). Some may argue that the corrupted appeals process largely undid the work of the trial, but (and although it took several years and cost the lives of two judges), the Maxi Trial eventually set off a chain-reaction that lead to a severe weakening of the Mafia and the eventual capture of those who escaped the trial's initial net, such as Riina and Brusca.
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant. The success of the trial drew other former Mafia members to testify against their former associates. This ultimately resulted in the shutting down of a significant percentage of Mafia-driven narcotics-trafficking and greatly damaged the alliances between Sicilian and American families.
Preceding events
The existence and crimes of the Mafia had been denied or merely downplayed by many people in authority for decades, despite proof of its criminal activities dating back to the 19th century. This can be attributed in part to three particular methods used by the Mafia to provide an environment akin to near immunity - paying off key people, killing real or perceived leaks in their own organization, and threatening or even killing key people (judges, lawyers, witnesses, politicians...) were used successfully to keep many prosecution efforts at bay. In fact it was only in 1980 that it was first seriously suggested that being a member of the Mafia should be a specific criminal offence by CommunistItalian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
politician Pio La Torre
Pio La Torre
Pio La Torre was a leader of the Italian Communist Party...
. The law only came into effect two years later - after La Torre had been gunned down for making that very suggestion.
During the early 1980s, the Second Mafia War
Second Mafia War
The Second Mafia War was a conflict within the Sicilian Mafia, mostly taking place in the early 1980s. As with any criminal organization, the history of the Sicilian Mafia is replete with conflicts and power struggles, and the violence that results from them, but these are generally localised and...
had raged as Corleonesi boss Salvatore Riina
Salvatore Riina
Salvatore "Totò" Riina is a member of the Sicilian Mafia who became the most powerful member of the criminal organization in the early 1980s. Fellow mobsters nicknamed him The Beast due to his violent nature, or sometimes The Short One due to his diminutive stature...
decimated other Mafia Families, resulting in hundreds of murders, including several high-profile authority figures such as Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was a general of the Italian carabinieri notable for campaigning against terrorism during the 1970s in Italy, and later assassinated by the Mafia in Palermo.-Biography:...
, head of counter-terrorism who had arrested Red Brigades
Red Brigades
The Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead"...
founders in 1974. The increasing public revulsion at the killing spree gave the necessary momentum for magistrates like Giovanni Falcone
Giovanni Falcone
Giovanni Falcone was an Sicilian/Italian prosecuting magistrate born in Palermo, Sicily. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Mafia in Sicily...
and Paolo Borsellino
Paolo Borsellino
Paolo Borsellino was an Italian anti-Mafia magistrate who was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo, less than two months after his fellow anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone had been assassinated....
to try to deliver a serious blow to the far-reaching criminal organization on the island.
The groundwork for the Maxi Trial was done at the preliminary investigative phase by Palermo's Antimafia Pool, created by judge Rocco Chinnici
Rocco Chinnici
Rocco Chinnici was a noted Italian Antimafia magistrate killed by the Mafia.-Life:Born at Misilmeri, Chinnici graduated in law at the University of Palermo in 1947 and started working as a magistrate in 1952 in Trapani. In 1966 he moved to the prosecutors office in Palermo...
and consisting of Falcone, Borsellino, Giuseppe Di Lello and Leonardo Guarnotta. After Chinnici’s murder in July 1983, his successor Antonino Caponnetto
Antonino Caponnetto
Antonino Caponnetto was an Italian Antimafia magistrate.Caponnetto was born in Caltanissetta. His career began in 1954 in Florence, but he became famous only in 1983, after Rocco Chinnici's assassination, when he took over his job in Palermo.Under his lead, the Antimafia pool of magistrates came...
, headed the pool. The Antimafia pool was a group of investigating magistrates who closely worked together sharing information on related cases to diffuse responsibility and to prevent one person from becoming the sole institutional memory and solitary target.
Location and defendants
Never before in the history of the Mafia had so many Mafiosi been on trial at the same time. A total of 474 defendants were facing charges, although 119 of them were to be tried in absentiaIn absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
as they were fugitives and still on the run (Salvatore Riina was one of these absent defendants.)
Amongst those present were Luciano Leggio
Luciano Leggio
Luciano Leggio was an Italian criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone...
, Riina's predecessor, who acted as his own lawyer, and also Giuseppe "Pippo" Calò
Giuseppe Calò
Giuseppe 'Pippo' Calò is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was referred to as the "Mafia's Cashier" because he was heavily involved in the financial side of organized crime, primarily money laundering....
and Michele Greco
Michele Greco
Michele Greco was a member of the Sicilian Mafia, previously incarcerated for multiple murders. His nickname was "il Papa" because of his ability to mediate between different Mafia families...
(the latter was the uncle of the infamous mass-killer Pino Greco).
The Maxi trial took place next to the Ucciardone (the Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
prison) in a bunker specially designed and built to try the defendants. It was a large octagonal building made from reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
that was able to prevent rocket attacks; inside there were cages built into the green walls holding the many defendants in large groups. There were over six-hundred members of the press as well as many carabinieri
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri is the national gendarmerie of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations, and is a branch of the armed forces.-Early history:...
wielding machine guns and a 24-hour air defense system keeping an eye on the defendants and would-be attackers attempting to thwart the efforts.
The trial
After several years of planning, the trial began on February 10, 1986. The presiding judge was Alfonso Giordano, flanked by two other judges who were 'alternates', should anything fatal happen to Giordano before the end of what was going to be lengthy trial. The charges faced by the defendants included 120 murdersHomicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
, drug trafficking, extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
and, of course, the new law that made it an offence to be a member of the Mafia, the first time that law would be put to the test.
Judge Giordano won a lot of praise for remaining patient and fair during such a mammoth case with so many defendants. Some of the defendants indulged in disruptive and rather alarming behaviour, such as one who literally stapled his mouth shut to signify his refusal to talk, another who feigned madness by frequently screaming and fighting with guards even when he was in a straitjacket
Straitjacket
A straitjacket is a garment shaped like a jacket with overlong sleeves and is typically used to restrain a person who may otherwise cause harm to themselves or others. Once the arms are inserted into the straitjacket's sleeves, they are then crossed across the chest...
and one who threatened to cut his own throat if a statement of his was not read out to the court.
Most of the crucial evidence came from Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta was a Sicilian mafioso. Although he was not the first pentito in the Italian witness protection program, he is widely recognized as the first important one breaking omertà...
a Mafioso captured in 1982 in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, where he had fled two-years previously after escaping while on day release during a prison sentence for double-murder. He had lost many relatives during the Mafia war, including two sons, as well as many Mafiosi allies such as Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade
Stefano Bontade was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Some sources spell his surname Bontate. He was the capomafia of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo...
and Salvatore Inzerillo
Salvatore Inzerillo
Salvatore Inzerillo was an Italian criminal, a member of the Sicilian Mafia, also known as Totuccio . He rose to be a powerful boss of Palermo's Passo di Rigano family...
, and so had decided to cooperate with the Sicilian magistrates. The Corleonesi continued its vendetta against Buscetta by killing several more of his relatives. Testifying against the Corleonesi was the only way he had left of avenging his murdered family and friends.
Leonardo Vitale
Leonardo Vitale was a member of the Sicilian Mafia who was one of the first to become an informant, or pentito, although originally his confessions were not taken seriously. Vitale was a man of honour or member of the Altarello di Baida cosca or family, Altarello being a small village just outside...
. Although Buscetta is widely regarded as the first of the pentiti (and was certainly the first to be taken seriously), back in 1973, 32-year-old Leonardo Vitale had turned himself in at a Palermo police station and confessed to being in the Mafia. He said he had committed many crimes for them, including two murders. He said he had been having a 'spiritual crisis' and felt remorse. However, his information was largely ignored because his unusual behaviour, such as self mutilation as a form of personal penitence, lead to many to regard him as being mentally ill and his detailed confessions therefore unworthy of being taken seriously. The only Mafiosi convicted by his testimony were Vitale himself and his Uncle. Vitale was held in a mental asylum then released in June 1984; six-months later he was shot dead.
There were many critics of the Maxi Trial. Some implied that the defendants were being victimized as part of some sort of vendetta of the magistrates. The Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia was an Italian writer, novelist, essayist, playwright and politician. Some of his works have been made into films, including Open Doors and Il giorno della civetta .- Biography :Sciascia was born in Racalmuto, Sicily...
said that: "There is nothing better for getting ahead in the magistracy than taking part in Mafia trials." Cardinal
Cardinal (Catholicism)
A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...
Pappalardo of the Catholic Church gave a controversial interview where he said that the Maxi Trial was "an oppressive show" and stated that abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
killed more people than the Mafia.
Other critics suggested that the word of informants - primarily Buscetta - was not the ideal way to judge other people, as even an informant who has truly repented is still a former criminal, liar and murderer and may still have a vested interest in modifying their testimony to suit their needs or even settle vendettas. It was also said that such a huge trial with so many defendants was not making allowances for the individuals, an attempt to "deliver justice in bulk" as one journalist put it.
The information that Buscetta gave judges Falcone and Borsellino was highly important, and was termed 'The Buscetta Theorem', in that the believability of his claims of the existence of the Mafia was central to the case. Buscetta gave a new understanding to how the Mafia functioned and how the clandestine groups of hierarchy in the Sicilian Cupola (the Sicilian Mafia Commission
Sicilian Mafia Commission
The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra...
) actually agreed on policy and business. For the first time the Mafia had been prosecuted as an entity rather than a collection of individual crimes.
The verdicts
The trial ended on December 16, 1987, almost two years after it commenced. The verdicts were announced at 7:30PM and took an hour to read through.Of the 474 defendants - both those present and those tried in absentia - 360 were convicted.
2,665 years of prison sentences were shared out between the guilty, not including the life sentences
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
handed to the nineteen leading Mafia bosses and killers, including Michele Greco
Michele Greco
Michele Greco was a member of the Sicilian Mafia, previously incarcerated for multiple murders. His nickname was "il Papa" because of his ability to mediate between different Mafia families...
, Giuseppe Marchese
Giuseppe Marchese
Giuseppe Marchese was a member of the Sicilian Mafia, who turned state witness . Giuseppe Pino Marchese was born in Palermo. His father Vincenzo Marchese was a powerful Mafia boss and his uncle Filippo Marchese was the head of the Corso dei Mille Mafia family.-Early Mafia career:He learned the...
and - in absentia - Salvatore Riina
Salvatore Riina
Salvatore "Totò" Riina is a member of the Sicilian Mafia who became the most powerful member of the criminal organization in the early 1980s. Fellow mobsters nicknamed him The Beast due to his violent nature, or sometimes The Short One due to his diminutive stature...
, Giuseppe Lucchese
Giuseppe Lucchese
Giuseppe Lucchese is a member of the Sicilian Mafia from the Brancaccio neighbourhood in Palermo. He was one of the favourite hitmen of the Corleonesi, headed by Totò Riina, during the Second Mafia War in 1981-83....
and Bernardo Provenzano
Bernardo Provenzano
Bernardo Provenzano is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and is suspected of having been the head of the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the village of Corleone, and de facto capo di tutti capi of the entire Sicilian Mafia until his arrest in 2006.His nickname is Binnu u tratturi...
.
A number of those convicted in absentia were, unknown to the judiciary, deceased by the time of the verdicts. They included Filippo Marchese
Filippo Marchese
Filippo Marchese was a leading figure in the Sicilian Mafia and a hitman suspected of dozens of homicides. He was the boss of the Mafia family in the Corso Dei Mille neighbourhood in Palermo....
, Rosario Riccobono
Rosario Riccobono
Rosario Riccobono was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of Partanna Mondello, a suburb of Palermo, his native city...
and Giuseppe Greco
Giuseppe Greco
Giuseppe "Pino" Greco was a hitman and high-ranking member of the Sicilian Mafia. A number of sources refer to him exclusively as Pino Greco although Giuseppe was his Christian name; "Pino" is a frequent abbreviation of the name Giuseppe.One of the most prolific killers in criminal history, he...
. Additionally Mario Prestifilippo
Mario Prestifilippo
Mario Prestifilippo was a member of the Sicilian Mafia.He was briefly the boss of the Ciaculli Mafia Family after Giuseppe Greco was murdered in 1985. He played a significant role in the Second Mafia War of the early 1980s orchestrated by Salvatore Riina...
was also on trial in absentia, but he was found shot dead in the streets while proceedings were still taking place.
A total of 114 defendants were acquitted, including Luciano Leggio
Luciano Leggio
Luciano Leggio was an Italian criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone...
, who had been charged with helping to run the Corleonesi Mafia Family
Corleonesi
The Corleonesi is the name given to a faction within the Sicilian Mafia that dominated Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was called the Corleonesi because its most important leaders came from the town of Corleone, first Luciano Leggio and later Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca...
from behind bars and for ordering the murder of Cesare Terranova
Cesare Terranova
Cesare Terranova was a magistrate and politician from Sicily notable for his anti-Mafia stance. From 1958 until 1971 Terranova was an examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office. He was one of the first to seriously investigate the Mafia and the financial operations of Cosa Nostra. He...
, who had prosecuted him back in 1970. The jury decided there was not enough evidence. It made little difference to Leggio's position though; he was already serving a sentence of life imprisonment
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
for a prior conviction for murder and remained behind bars until his death six years later.
The significant number of acquittals did manage to silence some of the critics who had believed that it was a show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
whereby nearly everyone would be convicted.
Of those who were acquitted, eighteen were later murdered by the Mafia, including one, Antoninio Ciulla, who was shot dead within an hour of being released as he drove home for a celebratory party.
Appeals
The Maxi Trial was largely regarded as a success. However, the appeals process soon began, which resulted in a shocking number of successful appeals on minor technicalities. Most of this was thanks to Corrado CarnevaleCorrado Carnevale
Corrado Carnevale is an Italian judge, currently member of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation. He became famous because of the large number of Mafia cases overturned in the Appeal Court where he was president, because of his involvement in some of the worst corruption scandals in the history...
, a judge in the pay of the Mafia who was handed control over most of the appeals by the corrupt politician Salvatore Lima
Salvatore Lima
Salvatore Lima was an Italian politician from Sicily who was murdered by the Mafia. He is often just referred to as Salvo Lima....
.
Carnevale was eventually nicknamed l'ammazza-sentenze - "The Sentence Killer" - because of his tendency to overturn Mafia convictions for trivial reasons. He threw out some drug-trafficking convictions, for example, because wiretapped
Telephone tapping
Telephone tapping is the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was an actual electrical tap on the telephone line...
conversations presented as evidence referred to the moving of "shirts" and "suits" instead of narcotics, even though it was well known that these were the codenames the members of that particular drug-ring employed for narcotics. He also released one Mafioso, who had been convicted of murder, on the grounds of ill-health. Despite being supposedly at death's door, the mobster immediately fled to Brazil with his illicit fortune and his family.
By 1989, only 60 defendants remained behind bars, and many were not exactly doing hard-time, with several residing in prison hospitals and taking it easy while malingering
Malingering
Malingering is a medical term that refers to fabricating or exaggerating the symptoms of mental or physical disorders for a variety of "secondary gain" motives, which may include financial compensation ; avoiding school, work or military service; obtaining drugs; getting lighter criminal sentences;...
with phantom illnesses. One convicted Mafioso had a private hospital ward to himself and had several common (non-Mafiosi) criminals as his servants, supposedly while suffering from a brain tumor
Brain tumor
A brain tumor is an intracranial solid neoplasm, a tumor within the brain or the central spinal canal.Brain tumors include all tumors inside the cranium or in the central spinal canal...
that, suspiciously, did not show any symptoms whatsoever.
Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino complained about these events but found it hard to be taken seriously as, so it seemed, the state's anti-Mafia crusade lost momentum and their opinions went largely unheard. One informer later said that the Mafia tolerated the Maxi Trials because they assumed those convicted would soon be quietly released once the public had lost interest, and the Mafia could continue with business as usual. It seemed, for a while, that they were correct in this assumption.
Aftermath
In January 1992, Falcone and Borsellino managed to take charge of further Maxi Trial appeals. Not only did they turn many appeals down, they reversed previous successful ones, resulting in many Mafiosi who had recently swaggered out of prison after their convictions were overturned being unceremoniously rounded up and put back behind bars, in many cases for the rest of their lives. This naturally angered the Mafia bosses, particularly Salvatore Riina, who had been hoping his in absentia sentence for murder would be reversed and allow him to retire in peace with his immense criminal fortune.That summer, Falcone and Borsellino were murdered in audacious bomb attacks. This resulted in public revulsion and a major crackdown against the Mafia that seriously weakened the organization.
Salvatore Riina was eventually captured, as were other Mafiosi like Giovanni Brusca
Giovanni Brusca
Giovanni Brusca is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia. He murdered the anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in 1992 and once stated that he had committed between 100 and 200 murders but was unable to remember the exact number...
. Corrado Carnevale, the "Sentence Killer", was sacked and imprisoned for being in league with the Mafia. However he was acquitted by the Corte di cassazione on 30 October 2002 and admitted in 2007 to work again as judge. Salvatore Lima would have probably faced a similar fate but he was murdered in 1992 for not preventing the reversal of the appeals at the start of that year.
Whether the Maxi Trial was a success or not is impossible to judge without taking into account subsequent events. The trial's primary success, at its very outset, was in holding the Mafia as an organization into account for its activities rather than just its individual members for isolated crimes (this approach was personified in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
via the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization...
). Some may argue that the corrupted appeals process largely undid the work of the trial, but (and although it took several years and cost the lives of two judges), the Maxi Trial eventually set off a chain-reaction that lead to a severe weakening of the Mafia and the eventual capture of those who escaped the trial's initial net, such as Riina and Brusca.
See also
- Mani puliteMani puliteMani pulite was a nationwide Italian judicial investigation into political corruption held in the 1990s. Mani pulite led to the demise of the so-called First Republic, resulting in the disappearance of many parties. Some politicians and industry leaders committed suicide after their crimes were...
- Carlo Alberto Dalla ChiesaCarlo Alberto Dalla ChiesaCarlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was a general of the Italian carabinieri notable for campaigning against terrorism during the 1970s in Italy, and later assassinated by the Mafia in Palermo.-Biography:...
's murder, ordered by Salvatore RiinaSalvatore RiinaSalvatore "Totò" Riina is a member of the Sicilian Mafia who became the most powerful member of the criminal organization in the early 1980s. Fellow mobsters nicknamed him The Beast due to his violent nature, or sometimes The Short One due to his diminutive stature...