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Strolls in Robe Notwithstanding, Mob Figure Must Stand Trial

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August 29, 1996, Section B, Page 1Buy Reprints
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Vincent Gigante, considered the most powerful Mafia boss in America but perhaps best known for walking through his Greenwich Village neighborhood in a bathrobe and pajamas, was declared mentally competent to stand trial on murder and racketeering charges yesterday by a judge who called his odd behavior an ''elaborate deception.''

Judge Eugene H. Nickerson of Federal District Court in Brooklyn found that the reputed head of the Genovese crime family ''has feigned illness for over 20 years'' in an attempt to skirt prosecution.

Mr. Gigante's organization is considered the wealthiest Mafia group in the nation, until recently having major influence on lucrative industries and operations like garbage hauling, the docks in New Jersey, the Fulton Fish Market and the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

But in recent years, the family's purported influence in these areas has come under a withering attack by law enforcement agencies and New York City officials. Yesterday's ruling, which was based on the testimony of psychiatrists and mob informers, was just the latest blow.

In his ruling, Judge Nickerson said that Mr. Gigante, 68, had feigned mental illness ''to hide his criminal activities and to evade prosecution,'' in this case on charges that he ordered the murders of six mob figures, participated in the killings of two more and conspired unsuccessfully to commit still more murders -- including that of his onetime archrival, John Gotti.

The judge's decision culminated six years of courtroom battling over Mr. Gigante's mental condition, and prosecutors said the finding could not be appealed before a trial is held. They said the decision to order Mr. Gigante to trial could be contested only as part of an overall appeal should he be convicted.

In his 25-page ruling, Judge Nickerson also found that in his campaign of ''persistent malingering,'' Mr. Gigante -- who is known as Chin, a nickname derived from his Italian name, Vincenzo -- had long been aided by relatives ''to revise his medical history by adding previously undisclosed incidents of brain trauma.''

According to law enforcement officials, Mr. Gigante is the only mob boss in New York City to escape conviction and imprisonment in the last decade. Mr. Gotti, for example, still believed to be the head of the Gambino crime family, was convicted of murder and racketeering in 1992 and is serving a life sentence, which is what Mr. Gigante will face if he is convicted of the murder charges against him.

The racketeering charges, contained in two indictments pending since 1990 and 1993, accuse Mr. Gigante of participating in an illegal payoff scheme involving an ironworkers' union and in an extortion conspiracy involving window manufacturing and installation companies doing work for the New York City Housing Authority.

Mr. Gigante has been free on bail while a seemingly endless series of hearings has been held over the last six years on the competency issue.

But during all those hearings, involving testimony by psychiatrists, mobsters-turned-informers and Federal agents, Mr. Gigante has not once appeared in court, having been granted judicial permission to remain away.

This will now change. After handing down his decision, Judge Nickerson ordered that Mr. Gigante must appear before him on Sept. 6 to be arraigned at last on the indictments.

One of the prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, an assistant United States attorney, said that a trial was most likely several months away.

Mr. Gigante's lawyer, James M. LaRossa, was said by his secretary yesterday to be out of his office and unavailable to comment on Judge Nickerson's ruling.

Among the unanswered questions is how Mr. Gigante will now respond to the charges. He might, for example, wage an insanity defense by arguing that if he performed the acts he is accused of, he did so as a result of mental illness and thus is not criminally responsible.

For Judge Nickerson, Mr. Gigante's mental abilities were clear.

''Gigante's attorneys say that he now leads a very narrow existence, lives at home with his mother, sees only a small group of friends and family and rarely leaves his mother's apartment,'' the judge said, referring to the home of Yolanda Gigante, who is in her 90's, on La Guardia Place in Greenwich Village.

Rather, the judge said, the testimony showed that during those years ''Gigante traveled in the middle of the night to the Upper East Side town house'' of a woman with whom he had a long relationship and several children, and that he was driven through the streets ''quickly to 'lose' law enforcement surveillance, attended clandestine meetings with his colleagues in organized crime and made important decisions involving large sums of money and the fate of certain individuals.''

Given ''Gigante's history of elaborate deception'' in long feigning mental illness before 1991, the judge concluded that Mr. Gigante was still faking it today.

In fact, he held, ''the reasonable inference from the appearance of any exaggerated symptoms after 1991 is not that his condition has deteriorated, but rather that the imminent threat of prosecution has increased his incentive to malinger.''

Four psychiatrists -- two appointed by the court and two selected by the defense -- testified at the hearings.

Initially, all four found Mr. Gigante not mentally competent to stand trial. By the end of the hearings, the two court-appointed psychiatrists had changed their opinions and found him competent, while the defense psychiatrists maintained their position that he was not.

Valerie Caproni, chief of the criminal division in the United States Attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York, which is prosecuting Mr. Gigante, said the Government was ''gratified that Judge Nickerson has found Vincent Gigante physically and mentally competent to stand trial.''

Judge Nickerson had also rejected defense arguments that Mr. Gigante was not physically fit to undergo a trial. The judge noted that in 1988 Mr. Gigante underwent heart-valve surgery and that doctors testified that he suffers from such conditions as an irregular heartbeat and elevated blood pressure.

But the judge concluded that the evidence ''has not shown that a trial at this time should subject him to a substantial additional risk of heart failure.''

At the 30-story West Village apartment building where Mr. Gigante's mother lives and where he was frequently seen strolling in his robe and slippers, several neighbors said yesterday that they still genuinely believe he is insane.

''If you met him in the elevator, he'd stare right through you like you weren't there,'' said one man, a director on the board of the cooperative apartment building, Washington Square Southeast Apartments, on La Guardia Place near Bleecker Street.

Others, upon hearing the name Gigante, smiled and walked away from reporters in mid-conversation.

''He's a scary person,'' said one elderly man walking a terrier. ''He's never alone, and he's always a presence around here. It's very intimidating.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: Strolls in Robe Notwithstanding, Mob Figure Must Stand Trial. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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