NY mobster looking to shuffle lawyers, again

BY ANTHONY M. DESTEFANO | anthony.destefano@newsday.com

Like oil and water, gangster Vincent Basciano just doesn't mix well with his lawyers.

The first major New York City mobster to face the death penalty since the 1940s, Basciano is in a major tiff with his main defense attorney and wants to reshuffle his defense team.

Hints of a problem for the 48-year-old Bonanno crime captain surfaced Tuesday during a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn when Basciano handed up a private letter to Judge Nicholas Garaufis. A hearing on the issue is scheduled today.

The letter's contents are secret, since Garaufis sealed the document and the transcript of a private meeting he had with Basciano and his lawyers without prosecutors present.

Last week, lead defense counsel Ephraim Savitt, a prominent death penalty expert, sent his own letter to Garaufis and offered to step aside and allow lawyer Richard Jasper to take the reins of the defense team. Savitt asked to stay on as capital punishment counsel.

Basciano, who now has four court-appointed lawyers, including Savitt, has put out feelers to see if private lawyers will take the case, said one attorney not working on the matter.

A handsome man known on the street in his heyday as "Vinnie Gorgeous" and "Vinnie from the Bronx," Basciano has a reputation for demanding that his lawyers listen to his ideas about trial strategy. While Basciano got a federal mistrial in 2006 in the murder of Frank Santoro, a different jury convicted him in 2007.

Basciano is scheduled to go trial in March in the racketeering killing of mob associate Randolph Pizzolo. The last big gangster executed in New York was Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, who was electrocuted in 1944 at Sing Sing.

In his letter, Savitt said he offered to step back as lead counsel to avoid causing a problem with the "comfort level that needs to assist fully in his own defense in this death penalty case."

Carefully couching his language, Savitt indicated that it was Basciano who wanted a "role reversal" among his lawyers, something Savitt now supports.

The source of tension is between Savitt and Basciano, who was sentenced to life in prison last year on a different case, is unclear. But since he was arrested in late 2004, Basciano has had close to a dozen attorneys working for him. Garaufis will have to approve any reshuffle of Basciano's defense team.