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In Her Father's Footsteps
The witness, Joseph "The Animal" Barboza, "walked like a silverback gorilla with a growling voice and dominating appearance," according to written accounts. He was bull-necked, had an odd set of incisor teeth like fangs, dark brown naturally wavy hair, deep-set eyes, and thick lips on an oversized head. He was apsychopath who is believed to have killed more than two dozen people before he was gunned down by mobsters in 1976. He had a face that young Juliane Balliro would never forget. Her father, Joseph J. Balliro, then a well-known, young criminal lawyer on the rise and among the few Italian-American attorneys in Boston, served as lead counsel in a case involving several Italian Americans whom Barboza had fingered for the Deegan murder. The case was highly publicized in the local press. Juliane, who was at that time a pre-teen in elementary school, kept a scrapbook of the newspaper clippings about the trial, carefully affixing each article to the pages of the book, page after page, day after day until the story was complete. Decades later, she would, once again, encounter the face that had stared up at her from those newspaper clippings. And she would help vindicate the men falsely accused of murder during the case her father defended. Cover-up goes on decades Unaware of secret FBI files that cast serious doubt on the veracity of its star witness, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts secured murder convictions in 1968, based largely on Barboza's false testimony. Peter Limone, Enrico Tameleo, and Louis Greco were sentenced to die in the electric chair (later commuted to life sentences), and Joseph Salvati was sentenced to life imprisonment. Joseph Balliro, however, continued throughout the next several years in his quest to exonerate Peter Limone. It wasn't until three decades later that evidence casting doubt on the verdicts came to light. By then, Tameleo and Greco had died in prison and Salvati had been paroled. Only Limone remained in prison. When the testimony of a longtime FBI informant resulted in the disclosure of the FBI's role in Barboza's false testimony, Limone was freed and Salvati, Limone, and the estates of the two deceased inmates filed lawsuits under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Shortly after Limone's release, a Suffolk University Law School professor and colleague of Boston partner Juliane Balliro asked her if she would consider working with him on a complex wrongful conviction case. "He said he would be sending me some file materials for what sounded like a good case. He asked me to take a look at them and let him know if I was interested," she recalls. "The boxes had been sitting in my office for some time before I was able to start picking through it. I opened a folder in one of the boxes labeled 'Media' and immediately recognized the newspaper clippings of Barboza. I hadn't seen those clippings in more than 30 years, but his face was unmistakable. He is one of the scariest-looking guys you've ever seen. I quickly realized the connection between this file and the case my father had tried decades earlier. "I could not believe it was the same case. I called my father immediately. He was as excited about the prospect of my taking on the case as I was." Details of the case from her childhood had evaded her, the scrapbook long since relegated to her mother's attic. As a child, she didn't understand - wasn't told - of the threats that came to her family, the severity of them in a time of pervasive organized crime in her city. She only recalls the "celebrity" status she and her sisters enjoyed when the trial was underway. "On the morning of the closing argument, after my sister and I had left for school, my mother received a telephone threat at home warning, 'We know where your daughters are.' I was in my classroom when I was called to the principal's office where there was a police officer waiting for me. I didn't know what I had done, but whatever it was I thought I was in really bad trouble. "The principal explained that a police officer was going to be driving us to and from school and standing outside our classroom door for a while. We didn't know what was happening at the time, but we were treated like celebrities at school. We thought the rides to and from school were great fun -- we even got to turn on the police car siren." The advent of the cover-up Barboza faced up to 89 years in prison on habitual offender charges when FBI agents began cultivating him as an informant against the Italian Mafia (La Cosa Notra or LCN). Agents plied him with promises of favorable recommendations and a light sentence. They also fabricated a story that LCN had put a contract out on his life. Barboza signaled a willingness to deal and eventually indicated he had information on the Deegan murder. Since it was of interest to the state, FBI agents brought in local detectives who questioned Barboza on multiple occasions. His account of the murder changed over time, but he continued to point the finger at four men whom the court would eventually call "the scapegoats." However, FBI agents had reason to doubt Barboza's story, including conversations obtained from a "bug" and other informants' implications of others in the murder. The true facts were not revealed until December 2000 when the Department of Justice released five memos in response to a FOIA request made on behalf of Limone. A state trial court vacated Salvati and Limone's convictions based on the new information, and Limone was finally released. The convicted men and the family of those who died in prison then became plaintiffs and filed separate actions in federal district court, eventually pursuing the Federal Tort Claims Act actions. In 2007, Ms. Balliro represented Limone and the estate of Henry Tameleo in that case. Following a 22-day bench trial, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner found the FBI "responsible for the framing of four innocent men." The plaintiffs had claimed malicious prosecution, coercive civil conspiracy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, negligent supervision, and loss of consortium. The court awarded damages of more than $100 million. The government appealed. In late summer 2009, a federal appeals court upheld the landmark verdict and the damages award, which is said to be the largest of its kind nationally. While the court questioned the size of the award, it noted, "But when we take into account the severe emotional trauma inflicted upon the scapegoats, we cannot say with any firm conviction that those awards are grossly disproportionate to the injuries sustained." "My father spent the better part of his career trying to free Peter Limone. He was a key witness for Peter at the civil trial," said Ms. Balliro, whose father is now in his 80s. "We hope the government will pay this award and allow these men to enjoy the few years they have left with their families. It is time for the government to put the sordid past of the FBI behind them and just move on."
Teddy Deegan's bullet-riddled body was found in Chelsea, Mass., in 1965. Initially, the small-time criminal's gangland slaying went unsolved. Two years later, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation cultivated a "cooperating witness" with ties to organized crime who claimed to have information on the murder.
