Lawyers spar over victims' 'testimony'

Defense attorneys and federal prosecutors are clashing over whether a secret court hearing should determine if the words of two alleged victims can be used against the man charged with killing them, a multimillionaire Dix Hills businessman.

The alleged killer, Christian Tarantino, who owned a number of health clubs in the metropolitan area, has been accused by federal prosecutors of also heading a robbery crew involved in the killing of three people. The killings, prosecutors say, grew out of a botched 1994 Muttontown armored car robbery.

A guard, Julius Baumgardt, was shot to death in the robbery, according to prosecutors, and Tarantino then had two other people - Louis Dorval and Vincent Garguilo - murdered because he feared they would inform on him.

Though they are dead, prosecutors want the words Dorval said to others and a tape Garguilo made of the robbery circumstances to be used at the trial of Tarantino.

Usually an accused has a right to confront the witnesses against him or her.

But in rare exceptions, if it can be proved at a court hearing, known legally as a Mastrangelo hearing, that a defendant was involved in preventing witnesses from testifying, remarks the witnesses had made can be used at trial.

In other words, prosecutors say an accused should not benefit from killing witnesses, and they want the dead men, in effect, to testify against their alleged killer.

Defense attorneys for Tarantino are arguing that a hearing on the issue scheduled for Monday in federal court in Central Islip should be closed to the public and press. They say the hearing would prejudice potential jurors and amounts to a "mini-trial, previewing the government's trial evidence, indeed its most sensational evidence."

Federal prosecutors in court papers filed late Tuesday say that they oppose the closing of the hearing and at the very least a preliminary public hearing should be held to determine if the Monday hearing should be sealed.

One of Tarantino's defense attorneys, James Froccaro of Port Washington, said they declined to comment, as did federal Prosecutor James Miskiewicz, who had worked for eight years on the case before Tarantino's arrest in 2008.

U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert has yet to rule on the issue.