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Thread: Nicholas Tartaglione Found Guilty in 2016 NY Quadruple Murder

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    Nicholas Tartaglione Found Guilty in 2016 NY Quadruple Murder







    Feds to seek death penalty against ex-Briarcliff cop Nick Tartaglione in quadruple slaying

    By Johnathan Bandler
    The Rockland/Westchester Journal-News

    Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Nicholas Tartaglione, a former Briarcliff Manor police officer accused in the killings of four men in Orange County nearly three years ago.

    That decision has been pending since Tartaglione's arrest in December 2016 and was conveyed to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas Tuesday morning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gerber.

    It is the second time in recent months that prosecutors opted to pursue capital punishment in the Southern District of New York, where death penalty cases are generally rare.

    Defense lawyer Bruce Barket, who said he was notified Thursday, didn't mince words as he left the federal courthouse in White Plains.

    "Unfortunate, despicable, unnecessary, unjust, egregious, thoughtless, pointless, those are all words that came to my mind," Barket said, adding "outrageous" to the list.

    Tartaglione is accused in the deaths of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez, who went missing April 11, 2016, after going to a bar in Chester, that was owned at the time by Tartaglione's brother.

    Their bodies were discovered eight months later, the day after Tartaglione's arrest, on property he had previously rented in Otisville.

    Prosecutors contend that Luna was lured to the bar to be confronted over money he owed from a drug deal. He brought the others along - Miguel Luna and Santiago were relatives and Gutierrez was a family friend - and they had nothing to do with the drug deal.

    Martin Luna's death was ruled a homicide but the autopsy did not reveal how he was killed. The other men were each shot in the head. Prosecutors have said Tartaglione was not present when the three men were shot because he had left with Martin Luna's body.

    Death penalty cases rare

    In September, prosecutors announced they were pursuing the death penalty against Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of killing eight people when he drove a truck down a Hudson River bike path in lower Manhattan on Halloween 2017.

    The last death penalty case in the Southern District of New York was a decade ago. Khalid Barns, the leader of a Peekskill drug ring, was found guilty of killing two drug dealers in Manhattan but was spared the death penalty when the jury opted instead for life imprisonment.

    The last execution in New York for a federal crime was in 1953 when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed following their conviction on espionage charges.

    Barket and other lawyers for Tartaglione worked on a mitigation package for more than a year to head off pursuit of the death penalty. In December they met with officials at the Department of Justice in Washington but failed to convince them.

    Barket has declined to discuss details of why the death penalty should not be pursued and on Tuesday would not again.

    "The first part of the trial that we will have, and we are preparing for, is the innocence phase and that's what we're preparing for as much as anything else," he said.

    He said that Tartaglione took the news about the government's decision "pretty well, all things considered."

    "He's more concerned about the time, the extra time it will take," Barket said. "He's focused like we all are on the first part of the trial."

    A formal notice of intent to seek capital punishment that the government must present to the defense will be completed in the coming weeks, Gerber said.

    Karas adjourned the case until May 3 for the defense to consider pre-trial motions they want to pursue related to both the case itself and to the death penalty. No trial date has been set.

    Tartaglione's father and relatives of the victim declined to comment as they left the courthouse.

    https://www.lohud.com/story/news/201...op/3213016002/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Ex-cop Tartaglione now charged with killing 3 in Otisville

    By Heather Yakin
    Times Herald-Record

    WHITE PLAINS — Ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione killed one of four Middletown men at a Chester bar in 2016 and then he and others moved the other three victims to Tartaglione’s property in Otisville and killed them there, according to a new indictment handed up Tuesday in federal court.

    Last month, federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York announced that they were seeking the death penalty against Tartaglione, 51, in the April 11, 2016, deaths of Martin Luna, Miguel Luna, Hector Gutierrez and Urbano Santiago. Prosecutors believe Martin Luna ran afoul of Tartaglione in a drug business deal, and that he took Gutierrez, Santiago and Miguel Luna to a meeting at the Likquid Lounge. The three men were innocent bystanders, prosecutors have said.

    The new indictment against Tartaglione, a former Briarcliff Manor cop, is similar to an earlier indictment: narcotics conspiracy, four counts of murder in furtherance of a narcotics conspiracy, three counts of use of a firearm in furtherance of narcotics trafficking resulting in death, one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, four counts of kidnapping, and four counts of transporting with intent to commit a crime of violence.

    Previously, prosecutors had argued that Tartaglione killed Martin Luna, whom he believed owed him money from a drug transaction, and took his body to the property at 419 Old Mountain Road in Otisville, leaving the other three men with Tartaglione’s compatriots, including former school security guard Joseph Biggs, 57, of Nanuet, who killed them and brought them to Otisville, where all four victims’ bodies were buried.

    However, the new indictment charges that Tartaglione “intentionally and knowingly killed, and counseled, commanded, induced, procured, and caused the intentional killing” of Martin Luna at the bar, and that the other three men were then taken to Otisville and killed there.

    The indictment says Tartaglione “did use and carry a firearm” and through use of that firearm caused the deaths of Santiago, Miguel Luna and Gutierrez. Prosecutors have not revealed how Martin Luna died.

    https://www.recordonline.com/news/20...3-in-otisville
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Nicholas Tartaglione quadruple homicide case: Video observations revealed

    By Jonathan Bandler
    lohud.com

    Surveillance video showed ex-Briarcliff Manor cop Nicholas Tartaglione putting a large object into the trunk of his car outside his brother’s bar in Chester, New York, on April 11, 2016, a few hours after four men who disappeared that day arrived there, federal court documents reveal.

    Authorities suspect the object contained the body of one of the men, Martin Luna, and that Tartaglione then drove it to property he was renting elsewhere in Orange County, in Otisville.

    Luna’s body and those of the others — a nephew, his niece’s boyfriend and a family friend — were dug up eight months later on the property, a day after Tartaglione was arrested in connection with the four deaths.

    The details of the surveillance video were revealed as part of a defense motion to suppress cell phone tower records in the case. His lawyers argue that the material was obtained without a warrant in violation of Tartaglione’s 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches.

    Prosecutors in June 2016 did get a judge’s permission to obtain the data from various companies for all calls bouncing off cell towers in the area of 69 Brookside Ave., the address of the bar. They did that under the federal Stored Communications Act that allows such applications for reasonable suspicion, as opposed to the higher standard of probable cause required for a search warrant.

    But the defense maintains that the prosecution did not have a good faith basis to circumvent the warrant, considering existing precedent and the "raging" legal debate over whether the federal law covers cell phone tracking data. A U.S. Supreme Court decision last year found that turning a suspect's cell phone into a tracking device is a violation of the 4th Amendment.

    "While law enforcement should not be penalized for following settled precedent, neither should it be rewarded for exploiting graying areas of constitutional law before they fade to black," Tartaglione's lawyer, Bruce Barket, wrote to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas last week.

    He added later that: "Good faith does not allow the government to bet on one side of the equation and to then obtain a heads-the-government-wins, tails-the-defense-loses outcome. The government can take the constitutionally modest approach and get a warrant, or can place a wager on one side of the legal split and bear the consequences if proven wrong."

    The charges against Tartaglione, who faces the death penalty, include conspiracy to distribute cocaine, murder in furtherance of a drug conspiracy and kidnapping. No trial date has been set.

    Investigation described


    Martin Luna had been involved in a drug trafficking operation with Tartaglione, prosecutors assert, and was lured to the Likquid Lounge after owing money after a drug delivery went bad. He brought along the other three, who prosecutors said were not involved in the earlier transaction.

    Luna’s death has been ruled a homicide even though the Orange County medical examiner could not pinpoint a cause. His nephew, Miguel Luna, his niece’s boyfriend, Urban Santiago, and Hector Gutierrez, were each shot in the head.

    Prosecutors had initially stated that Tartaglione killed Martin Luna, left with his body, and the others were killed at the bar by co-conspirators. But now their theory is that the co-conspirators brought the three men to the Otisville property and killed them there.

    The investigation by the FBI and New York state police into the disappearance of the four men was detailed by prosecutors in their application for the cell phone tower data.

    Surveillance video from the area of the Likquid Lounge showed the four victims getting out of a Chevy Equinox and entering the bar on the afternoon of April 11, 2016. A short time later, Tartaglione parked his Ford Explorer in the lot and went into the bar.

    An hour later, Tartaglione turned his car around so that it backed up to the entrance of the bar, opened the trunk and went back inside. Thirty minutes after that, Tartaglione, an unidentified man and either Miguel Luna or Gutierrez emerged from the bar, looked into the trunk and returned back to the bar. An hour after that, Tartaglione and the unidentified man, came out carrying the large object and put it into the truck before Tartaglione drove off.

    The victims were reported missing on April 15 and their car was found in the lot the next day. When a police officer went into the bar to see if there was surveillance video, an employee told him the system was broken. Three weeks later, the bar was closed for renovations.

    By then, state police had been investigating Tartaglione for drug trafficking and money laundering for about a year and undercover officers had twice bought anabolic steroids from him, according to the application.

    He had received several deliveries of steroids to his home in Carmel from 2013 to 2015 and was known to have made large cash deposits at ATMs and use large amounts of cash at Connecticut casinos. The application cited his disability income and earnings from a pet grooming store that would not have accounted for the tens of thousands of dollars in cash.

    Trips to Texas, arrests


    The application also details several times that two of the victims drove to Texas on trips that appeared related to drug activity. The first was in April 2011, when they were pulled over by police in Louisiana and had nearly $126,000 in the car. The application refers to them as Victim-1 and Victim-2, but other federal court records make it clear that is Martin Luna and Santiago.

    The application says they were pulled over for speeding, although federal court records from the incident reveal that it was for improper lane use. They claimed the money was Luna’s from a construction business and that he was taking it to his family in Mexico.

    Both pleaded guilty to charges related to bulk-cash smuggling. Luna, a Mexican citizen but a legal permanent resident of the United States, was sentenced to two years in prison. Santiago, a Mexican citizen, was sentenced to 15 months in prison and was deported in May 2012.

    A month later, Santiago sneaked back into Texas and was arrested by border control agents. He had his supervisory release revoked and was sent to prison again for six months. It was unclear from federal court records whether he was deported again.

    But on Feb. 9, 2016, he and Luna were pulled over for speeding in Mississippi in a Nissan Armada registered to Tartaglione, according to the government’s application. Later that day, they checked into a Houston hotel and the following day they were again stopped for speeding. This time, authorities found a hollowed-out tire secured to the bottom of the car that required a mechanic to remove. Additional details related to that incident were redacted under court order.

    On March 22, 2016, Luna flew from JFK Airport to Mexico. He returned on April 9, two days before the victims disappeared.

    Cell tower records: 9 phones

    The application for the cell phone tower records related to nine phones belonging to Tartaglione and others whose names were redacted. It was unknown whether two of the redacted names were Joseph Biggs and Gerard Benderoth.

    Biggs, a school security guard, was indicted on similar charges in June 2017 but the status of his case is uncertain as he has not appeared in court with the ex-cop, and court documents related to him have been sealed for over a year.

    Benderoth is an ex-Haverstraw police officer who fatally shot himself in 2017 as FBI agents investigating the quadruple homicide pulled over his car in Thiells.

    The application details more than 100 calls per month between Luna and an employer, one of the names redacted, and who authorities suggest was a co-conspirator of Tartaglione’s.

    After two phone calls with Luna on April 10, 2016, the employer immediately called one of three cell phone numbers associated with Tartaglione. The employer also called Luna at 12:47 pm on April 11, and he then made two calls to Tartaglione later that afternoon.

    There was never another call to Luna from the employer, even though the victims were not reported missing for four days.

    “Given (the employer’s) prior pattern of frequent contact with his employee Victim-1 which stopped on the day of Victim-1’s disappearance, coinciding with contact between (the employer) and Nicholas Tartaglione, I respectfully submit there is reason to believe that (the employer) conspired with Tartaglione in the kidnapping and/or murder of Victim-1 and that (the employer) knew that Victim-1 would not be able to answer the Victim-1 phone after April 11, 2016,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey wrote in the application.

    https://www.lohud.com/story/news/cri...ce/1984365001/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Feds seek September 2020 trial date for Tartaglione in quadruple homicide

    Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to set a September 2020 trial date for Nicholas Tartaglione, the former Briarcliff Manor cop charged in a 2016 quadruple-homicide in Orange County.

    In a letter Tuesday to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas, prosecutors Maurene Comey and Jason Swergold proposed a timetable starting in February with defense motions to challenge the death penalty in the case and culminating in jury selection in mid-September.

    "The government respectfully submits that its proposed schedule appropriately balances the need for adequate time to prepare a defense with the defendant's and the public's right to a speedy trial," the prosecutors wrote.

    They said the timetable roughly follows the 18-month average between notice to seek the death penalty and trial in federal capital cases across the country. Prosecutors notified the defense of the decision to pursue the death penalty in April.

    Asked to comment on the prosecution's proposed timetable, Tartaglione's lead lawyer, Bruce Barket, called it "overly ambitious." He would not elaborate.

    The trial would be at the federal courthouse in White Plains and prosecutors estimate that 1,500 potential jurors would be needed.

    Tartaglione is accused of luring Martin Luna to a bar in Chester on April 11, 2016, because Luna had not repaid money he had gotten from a botched drug deal.

    Police released these photos in the spring of 4 missing men from the Middletown, New York area. On Tuesday, federal authorities said a former Briarcliff Manor police officer, Nicholas Tartaglione, had been charged in their slayings.

    Luna brought along his nephew, Miguel Luna; his niece's boyfriend, Urbano Santiago; and a family friend, Hector Gutierrez. Authorities said the four men were never seen again. Their bodies were discovered in December 2016, a day after Tartaglione's arrest, on property in Otisville that he was renting at the time the men disappeared.

    In anticipating that the defense would want a later trial, the prosecutors said the victims' relatives deserve an end to the criminal proceedings, as does Tartaglione, who has been incarcerated since his arrest. They also said that the longer the trial is delayed, the more chance that witnesses may no longer be available or their memories could fade.

    (source: lohud.com)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Nicholas Tartaglione: Suspect in quadruple slaying of Middletown men asks for move to new lockup

    A former cop facing the death penalty in the slayings of 4 Middletown men has asked a federal judge to order he be moved from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan to Nassau County Correctional Center, citing poor conditions and retaliation at the federal lockup.

    Nicholas Tartaglione, 52, a former Briarcliff Manor police officer who was living in Otisville, faces federal charges of murder, kidnapping and narcotics conspiracy in connection with the April 11, 2016 disappearances and deaths of Martin Luna, Miguel Luna, Hector Gutierrez and Urbano Santiago.

    Officials say Tartaglione and Joseph Biggs of Nanuet lured Martin Luna to a Chester bar because Tartaglione thought Luna had taken money meant for a drug deal. Luna brought along the other victims, who officials say had no part in the cocaine conspiracy. Prosecutors say Martin Luna was killed at the bar, and the other three men were shot at Tartaglione’s property near Otisville. All of the victims were later found buried there.

    On Aug. 28, Tartaglione’s lead attorney, Bruce Barket of Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco, filed papers asking federal Judge Kenneth Karas to order Tartaglione’s move to Nassau County because of ongoing issues, many of which Barket and his co-counsel cited in a similar 2019 request.

    There is precedent for the Nassau jail to hold federal death penalty inmates awaiting trial, Barket wrote; and the jail, unlike the federal prisons, has resumed in-person visitation.

    “Over the course of the last 4 years the MCC has proven it cannot provide a safe, clean facility for Mr. Tartaglione while he awaits trial and either will not or cannot provide constitutionally-mandated access to counsel for an inmate facing a death penalty trial,” Barket wrote in the request. He cited long-standing issues of vermin infestation, including mice and rats crawling on inmates as they try to sleep; standing water and leaks; and limited access for inmates to laundry or showers; loss of personal items, including legal papers, when Tartaglione is moved to a new cell or unit. Prison officials have also been slow to give Tartaglione mail and magazines his family has sent, leaving him locked up without new reading material, to the detriment of his mental state, Barket wrote.

    Correction officers have singled out Tartaglione for his complaints about conditions, parading him around the cell block to point out the issues, and setting him up as a target for retaliation by other inmates, Barket argued. Tartaglione also found feces in one of his meals, the lawyer wrote.

    Barket wrote that Tartaglione has been unable to review discovery materials in his case, most of which are on computer disk, for the past 6 months. Quarantine restrictions and various lockdowns have prevented Tartaglione and his legal team from meeting in person – crucial to establishing the trust necessary between lawyer and client in a death penalty case, and for discussion of serious and sensitive legal matters – since February 2018, Barket wrote. Those access to counsel issues predate the pandemic, Barket wrote, but the lockdowns have exacerbated them.

    "A video connection for an hour every 10 days is no substitute for the human connection one develops with a client in person," Barket wrote.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York plans to review the request, consult with the Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service, and answer Barket’s letter by Sept. 11.

    A year ago, Tartaglione’s lawyers filed a similar request, alleging threats from correction officers in the wake of the suicide of financier, sex offender, trafficking suspect and former Tartaglione cellmate Jeffrey Epstein in MCC. At that time, Karas declined to move Tartaglione, but threatened to hold hearings on conditions at the federal lockup if Tartaglione’ treatment and access to counsel didn’t improve.

    (source: recordonline.com)
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    Rochester lawyer tapped for death penalty defense of ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione

    An upstate lawyer has stepped in to help ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione avoid the death penalty in the slayings of four men in Orange County.

    William Easton was assigned to the defense team this week to replace Anthony Ricco, who had to step down.

    Easton, who heads a Rochester law firm, was appointed by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas on Monday at the recommendation of David Patton, executive director of the Federal Defenders of New York.

    Patton told Karas that it was difficult to find learned counsel – attorneys who defend in capital punishment cases – in the Southern District of New York because of “the large number of conflicts,” but he did not elaborate.

    Potential conflicts have delayed the case for nearly two years although none have been identified publicly. Karas allowed Tartaglione to stick with his lead attorney, Bruce Barket, last month following an extensive hearing which even the prosecutors were not privy to.

    There was no indication Ricco's departure was related to a conflict. No ruling related to why he had to step down has been made public.

    The end of the conflicts hearing should pave the way for a trial date to finally be set in the case.

    Tartaglione, a retired Briarcliff Manor cop, was arrested in December 2016 and charged with murder as part of a drug conspiracy in the deaths of Martin Luna, Miguel Luna, Urbano Santiago and Hector Gutierrez.

    Prosecutors contend that Tartaglione and others lured Martin Luna to a bar in Chester eight months earlier because he owed money from a botched drug deal. Luna brought the other three along and none were ever seen alive again. Their bodies were discovered the day after Tartaglione’s arrest on property he had previously rented in Otisville.

    The defense team remains hopeful that prosecutors will no longer seek the death penalty, depending on how President Joe Biden chooses to proceed on capital punishment.

    Easton has handled death penalty cases throughout federal courts in New York and when the state had the death penalty he was a regional capital defender. He is currently representing James Krauseneck in Monroe County on murder charges in the 1982 ax killing of his wife.

    Easton handled the successful appeal of a Tioga County man’s second murder conviction in the 2001 death of his estranged wife, whose body was never found. Cal Harris was a car salesman who went through four trials in that case before he was acquitted by a judge in 2016. Harris’ lawyer in the last trial was Barket, who called Easton an excellent lawyer who he was pleased to be working with again.

    Ricco has been a much sought after lawyer in state and federal cases for decades.

    One of his many high-profile cases showed how lawyers often cannot avoid conflicts.

    Ricco had to step down from representing Sammy “The Bull” Gravano – the mob heavy who turned on John Gotti – in a New Jersey murder case 16 years ago because he was potentially going to have to testify.

    That occurred when the main witness, a hitman who claimed Gravano hired him to kill an NYPD detective decades earlier, tried to extort $200,000 from Gravano through Ricco, according to published reports at the time. The case against Gravano was later dismissed when the hitman died in jail.

    In recent years in Westchester, Ricco briefly represented then-Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas on charges he stole campaign funds. He is currently representing Alika Crew, a New Rochelle woman charged with attempted murder in the stabbing of her ex-fiance’s girlfriend.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.loh...amp/5333051001
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    Tartaglione makes bid for no death penalty in quadruple homicide case

    Jeffrey Epstein's missing suicide footage among items being used in ex-cop's defense

    By Jonathan Bandler
    Lolud News

    The disappearance of video footage of financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s first suicide attempt should mean that his cellmate, ex-Westchester cop Nicholas Tartaglione, doesn’t face the death penalty in a drug-related quadruple homicide, Tartaglione’s lawyers argue in new court documents.

    They contend that proof Tartaglione tried to help Epstein would have been powerful mitigation in the penalty phase if he was found guilty of any death-eligible charges.

    “This video existed, the defense requested its preservation and the government failed to preserve it, impacting Tartaglione’s ability to present mitigation in ways that are far-reaching and difficult to trace,” defense lawyers Bruce Barket, Aida Leisenring, Edward Rymsza, Karl Schwartz and Oliver Loewy wrote last week.

    “The Government can only guess at what impact the video would have on the jury if presented and guesswork is impermissible in a capital case such as this.”

    The motion is among six by the defense for why the death penalty should be off the table when Tartaglione faces trial, likely in April 2023.

    Most of the 292-page document focuses on the death penalty generally and not specifically how it pertains to Tartaglione’s case. One 23-page section that presumably does is completely redacted.

    In addition to longstanding challenges related to the arbitrariness, unreliability and cruelty of capital punishment, Tartaglione’s lawyers also argue that his New York-based right not to be executed would be violated as this state does not have capital punishment.

    They also argue that the Federal Death Penalty Act violates the anti-commandeering clause of the 10th Amendment by delegating state resources in the federal process. The act allows U.S. Marshals to utilize state facilities for executions, even though for more than five decades federal death row inmates have been housed and executed at a federal facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.

    If U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas does not strike the death penalty, Tartaglione’s lawyers want him to curtail the aggravating factors that jurors would consider if they find him guilty of death-eligible charges.

    Among those they want stricken are that Tartaglione was a law enforcement officer; that one of the killings was "heinous, cruel or depraved;" and that the killings followed "substantial planning and premeditation."

    A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting Tartaglione, declined to comment. Prosecutors have until Aug. 26 to reply to the defense motions.

    Tartaglione, 54, spent most of his career as a Briarcliff Manor police officer, retiring in 2008, but also was a cop in Mount Vernon and Pawling.

    He is accused in a drug conspiracy that included the 2016 killings of four men whose bodies were discovered on property he rented in Orange County.

    The men went missing April 11, 2016, after Martin Luna was lured to a bar run by Tartaglione’s brother in Chester because he owed money for a drug deal. Luna brought along his nephew, Miguel Luna, his niece’s fiancé, Urbano Santiago, and a family friend,

    Hector Gutierrez, none of whom had been involved in the deal.

    According to prosecutors, Tartaglione strangled Martin Luna with a zip tie and brought his body to the property. The other men were then brought there by co-conspirators, where each was shot, including one by Tartaglione, prosecutors said.

    The bodies were discovered buried there eight months later around the time Tartaglione was arrested.

    The defense has separately asked Karas to suppress statements Tartaglione made to New York State Police investigators when they took him into custody.

    In the summer of 2019, Tartaglione shared a cell with Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal holding facility in lower Manhattan, following Epstein’s arrest.

    On July 23, Epstein was found unconscious in the cell with marks on his neck.

    He was placed on suicide watch, but was taken off of it, possibly because he claimed Tartaglione had assaulted him and was looking for a second opportunity to kill himself. The two were not sharing a cell when Epstein then hanged himself on Aug. 14.

    The status of any video was unclear for several months. That December, prosecutors initially said the video was not preserved but a day later said that it was. But the following month, they reported that the video that was preserved was from a different tier and no footage remained from Epstein and Tartaglione's cellblock.

    Prosecutors at the time argued that the damage to Tartaglione's case was not insurmountable, in part because other evidence of his efforts existed and also because there would have been no audio on any footage.

    They also suggested they had no intention of arguing for the death penalty on the grounds that Tartaglione posed a future danger in prison.

    His lawyers say that is irrelevant, as he cannot be barred from presenting evidence of good behavior while in custody.

    The defense acknowledges that the loss of the video would only be a due-process violation if "comparable evidence" was not available. But they argue none exists, including statements prosecutors have provided from some of the staff members who responded to Tartaglione’s pleas for help.

    "These statements are partial and lack the gravity and inherent truth video footage provides," the defense wrote.

    https://www.lohud.com/story/news/202...e/65386377007/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  8. #8
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    Justice Dept. not seeking death penalty in drug conspiracy case of ex-Briarcliff Manor police officer

    By News 12 Staff

    The U.S. Justice Department will not seek the death penalty in the case of ex-Briarcliff Manor police officer Nicholas Tartaglione.

    "As stated on the record this morning, at the direction of the Attorney General, the United States herby withdraws the notice of intent to seek the death penalty in this case," prosecutors said in a letter to federal Judge Kenneth Karas

    Tartaglione is accused in a drug conspiracy that included the 2016 killings of four men whose bodies were discovered on a property Tartaglione rented in Orange County.

    The men went missing after one of the men was lured to a bar run by Tartaglione’s brother in Chester, allegedly because he owed money for a drug deal. That man brought along the other three, none of whom were believed to have been involved in the deal.

    The bodies were discovered in December 2016, eight months after they were reported missing.

    A second person has been charged in the case, but their status is unknown.

    "We're pleased with the Department of Justice's decision. Mr. Tartaglione, who has always maintained his innocence, is looking forward to a non-death penalty trial where he hopefully will be exonerated," said Bruce Barket, Tartaglione's attorney.

    Tartaglione’s trial is scheduled to begin next spring.

    https://connecticut.news12.com/justi...acy-case-of-ex
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Jury selection begins in quadruple murder case against former Briarcliff Manor police officer

    By News 12 Staff

    Jury selection is now happening in the quadruple murder case against former Briarcliff Manor Police officer Nicholas Tartagilone.

    The 54-year-old is facing multiple charges for what prosecutors have called the "gangland-style" murders of four men.

    The former Briarcliff Manor police officer is accused of being involved in a high-profile drug conspiracy and quadruple murder.

    According to prosecutors, Tartaglione lured a man named Martin Luna to an Orange County bar run by Tartaglione's brother back in April of 2016. The meeting had to do with drug money Luna allegedly owed Tartaglione.

    Authorities say Luna brought along three men, who were uninvolved with the drug deal.

    All four men were reported missing after the meeting, and their bodies were eventually discovered eight months later at a property rented by Tartaglione near Otisville in Orange County.

    Originally prosecutors were seeking the death penalty in this case, but this past summer officials from the U.S. Justice Department made the decision to take that off the table.

    The move reportedly involved financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein, who was Tartaglione's cellmate. Defense attorneys claim Tartaglione tried to help Epstein during his first suicide attempt in jail, but the video of that incident went missing. They say if a jury found Tartaglione guilty of death-eligible charges, that video could make a difference in sentencing.

    He is now in federal lockup in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.

    Tartaglione faces life in prison if he is found guilty.

    The trial is expected to last about a month.

    https://westchester.news12.com/jury-...police-officer
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Bodybuilder details strangling, fatal shootings in Tartaglione quadruple murder trial

    By Jonathan Bandler
    Rockland/Westchester Journal News

    One man, Martin Luna, was already dead over a $200,000 drug debt, his body wrapped in a blue tarp. His two relatives and a family friend, their hands tied, knelt on the ground as ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione told them everything would be OK.

    But Joseph Biggs, a bodybuilding enforcer who collected debts for Tartaglione, detailed for a federal jury Wednesday how the men would not leave that mountainside clearing in Orange County alive seven years ago. Biggs said he shot one of them in the head, handed the black revolver to Tartaglione and turned away, hearing two more gunshots as the other men were killed as well.

    He said he had resisted moments earlier when his fellow enforcer, another ex-cop named Gerard Benderoth, told him he was "going to get his hands dirty" and demanded he take the gun. Benderoth told him he had two choices. "Either you leave here with us or you stay here with them," Biggs recounted him saying.

    Biggs as a key witness

    Biggs testified as the main cooperating witness against Tartaglione, who is charged with murder, kidnapping and drug conspiracy in the April 11, 2016, murders of Martin Luna, 41, his 25-year-old nephew Miguel Luna, his niece's husband Urbano Santiago, 35, and Hector Gutierrez, 43.

    Biggs said Tartaglione strangled Martin Luna to death hours earlier at a Chester bar where he had been lured. And the others, who had not been expected to show up with Luna, were killed on the property Tartaglione rented at the time in Mount Hope. The bodies were not discovered until eight months later.

    Biggs' testimony is the only eyewitness account of the killings the jury will hear. Benderoth, the man he said helped him and Tartaglione restrain and kill the four men, fatally shot himself on March 8, 2017, as FBI agents were approaching his car to arrest him.

    Benderoth had been a police officer in Haverstraw and New York City and was a strongman competitor known as the "White Rhino."

    Biggs, now 61, lived in Nanuet and was a security guard at the Greenburgh-Graham school in Hastings-on-Hudson when he was arrested in the parking lot there in June 2017.

    Biggs' background

    Biggs said he was a drug addict from his teenage years until his late 20s when he stopped at the time his youngest child was born. He supported his habit with armed robberies and burglaries but avoided any criminal record.

    Biggs said he had been sexually abused by a coach when he was 14 and called himself a "garbagehead" after that, taking cocaine, heroin, LSD, marijuana, anything "to just not feel like me."

    He said he met Tartaglione through the local gym scene in Rockland and began buying steroids from him on a regular basis around 2006, usually in the parking lot of the McDonalds in West Nyack. A friendship developed and Biggs said that around 2013 Tartaglione started using him and Benderoth as enforcers to collect debts from steroid customers.

    Their typical approach, Biggs said, was to confront the customer as they left a gym, box them in between parked cars and demand the money. If they didn't pay up then, he said, "we'd take him somewhere where the money was."

    Biggs acknowledged a "complicated" relationship with Benderoth, including consensual sex between the two even after a bizarre incident in the married ex-cop's bedroom that ended with Benderoth sexually assaulting him. He had gone there because Benderoth asked if he wanted to engage in a threesome with him and his wife. Once in the bedroom, though, the wife was not there and Benderoth came on to him. Biggs said he tried to step away but Benderoth began beating him, pinning him to the ground and forcing him into sex.

    "I put myself in a situation," he told Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey. "I didn't see it coming."

    Despite the violence of it, Biggs acknowledged having sexual contact with Benderoth on other occasions and said he never told anyone about it until his arrest because he was embarrassed.

    He did scale down his collections with Benderoth though, he said, because it was more profitable to get a package of steroids from Tartaglione as compensation for the collections than the cash Benderoth was giving him.

    Shift to cocaine

    He said he learned in late 2015 that Tartaglione had taken up cocaine trafficking, investing in the purchase of cocaine in Texas and having it sold in Florida with the help of Luna; Luna's boss who lived in Florida, Jason Sullivan, who Biggs knew just as Jay, and Marcos Cruz, a farmhand of Tartaglione's.

    But in early 2016, Tartaglione asked for his help getting more than $200,000 back from Luna, who claimed that the second time he went to Texas to buy cocaine the people he paid took off with the money and never gave him the drugs.

    He said he met with Luna and Cruz but soon Luna broke off communication. Tartaglione then sent both Benderoth and Biggs to find Luna, but they couldn't.

    What Biggs testified about the killings

    On April 11, 2016, with the help of Sullivan, they lured Luna to the Likquid Lounge, a bar owned by Tartaglione's brother in a Chester strip mall. Biggs said they had Benderoth meet Luna at the door because the two men had never met.

    Luna had been expected to come alone. But he brought along Miguel Luna, Santiago and Gutierrez.

    Once they entered, Biggs said, Luna recognized him and bolted for the emergency exit. But it had been blocked and he bounced off the heavy door. Benderoth then ordered everyone to the floor at gunpoint. As Benderoth kneeled on Luna's back, Biggs started duct-taping the others' hands, he said. The three men were put in the office and Luna was seated on a chair in the bathroom, his hands bound behind his back.

    When Tartaglione arrived, Biggs said, he went into the bathroom to confront Luna. Biggs said he stayed in the office watching the others but could hear the smacking sounds of Luna being beaten and Tartaglione demanding his money.

    Biggs said he didn't know any of the others, but described Santiago as the other captive who was then put in the bathroom as well while Tartaglione continue to beat up Luna. Biggs said he heard a gasping, choking sound for about 30 seconds and looked in to see Martin Luna lying motionless on his side, bleeding from his head, Santiago looking "very scared." Tartaglione went to his car to get a tarp and Biggs was directed to wipe up a blood streak.

    Biggs said he helped Tartaglione carry the body to the car. Because he spoke Spanish, Biggs was also tasked with making sure Santiago complied when he was directed to call a relative to say there was a problem and he had to go to Mexico. After Tartaglione ended the call, Biggs said, Santiago told Tartaglione he was going to get him his money.

    When Tartaglione drove off with Luna's body, Biggs said he urged Benderoth that they should just leave, that the police could show up because someone from the Chinese restaurant next door had heard noises and was asking what was going on.

    They soon drove the other men to Tartaglione's property on Old Mountain Road in Mount Hope.

    While Biggs said he did not watch the second and third men get shot, he suggested Tartaglione and Benderoth had each shot one of them because he had given the gun to Tartaglione but Benderoth was holding it immediately after the two gunshots.

    He said he was directed to cut the duct tape off the men's hands and Tartaglione got a back hoe to start digging a hole and the bodies of the three men who were shot were thrown inside. But they had to stop digging because a piece of the back hoe fell off.

    When Benderoth told him to get into the hole to retrieve the broken piece and looked at Tartaglione, Biggs got the impression he wanted to kill him. But Tartaglione shook his head and hands, indicating "no" Biggs said.

    Before Luna's body was thrown into the hole on top of the others, Biggs said, Tartaglione cut a zip tie from around Luna's neck. They shoveled dirt onto the bodies until nightfall.

    Tartaglione then threw the dead men's wallets and other belongings into a furnace near the house, Biggs said. He and Benderoth were sent to pick up Cruz so they could use a key fob taken from the dead men to find the car they had arrived in and move it as far away from the bar as possible. They didn't manage to find it.

    On their way back to Rockland County that night, Biggs said, Benderoth threw the spent shell casings and remaining bullets from the black revolver out the window on the New York State Thruway. He wasn't sure if he threw the gun out as well.

    Biggs' guilty plea, cooperation

    Biggs has pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping and drug conspiracy charges and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in hopes of some leniency from a mandatory sentence of life in prison. That's the only incentive he needs, he suggested, to testify truthfully. "I'd like to hold my grandchildren," he said.

    But he acknowledged on cross examination by defense lawyer Bruce Barket that his truthfulness and cooperation are for the lawyers relying on him, the prosecutors, to determine.

    The defense maintains that Tartaglione was framed for the murders, that the drug conspiracy had involved Luna, Cruz, Sullivan, Biggs and Benderoth and not Tartaglione. Barket cited the fact that Tartaglione never had a burner phone like Biggs and Sullivan and that it was Sullivan, not Tartaglione, who had the access to the money and the cocaine in Florida.

    Barket questioned Biggs about the contacts in his burner phone that showed Jay (Sullivan) and Marcos (Cruz) with dollar signs next to their names.

    And he suggested that it was actually Biggs who had strangled Martin Luna. He cited an incident for which Biggs was arrested in 2015 for squeezing a man's neck until he lost consciousness after his daughter had claimed the man assaulted her. And he got Biggs to concede that five to 10 times he had acted similarly to try to get people to pay their debts.

    The defense maintains details had been fed to the cooperators to fit their narrative of the case. Biggs conceded to Barket that a New York state police investigator had told him that he thought Tartaglione had snapped and something bad happened and that Luna had been killed by Tartaglione.

    On redirect, Comey asked Biggs if law enforcement had ever told Biggs to frame Tartaglione. They had not, he said.

    "If you tell a single lie, what happens?" she asked.

    "I go to jail for the rest of my life."

    https://news.yahoo.com/bodybuilder-d...123147808.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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