Being Oscar (17 page)

“No further questions,” I said.

I didn’t call another witness. It was a nineteen-minute defense.

In summation, I tried to hammer on the same points I had made during the trial: their accusations didn’t make any sense, the government witnesses were not credible, the tapes and the “confession” were just Jimmy boasting and bragging and trying to survive. My argument lasted close to six hours, the longest I ever made.

You hope that in a case like this, with everything stacked against you, one or two jurors will agree with you. Maybe you can get a hung jury and negotiate a plea deal for your client.

In this case, all twelve jurors heard what I was saying.

They found Jimmy Chagra not guilty of the murder of Judge John H. Wood, Jr.

To this day, I still get asked about that case. Invariably someone will want to know how I felt about “helping Chagra get away with murder.” Or, “Doesn’t it make you sick to know you helped him beat the case when you knew he was guilty?” There’s no answer to that question, because whoever asks it doesn’t understand the system.

Think about the O.J. Simpson case, in which I almost got involved. It’s the same issue and the same post-verdict question. Unpopular clients still deserve representation. Our adversarial system is set up so that the accused is presumed innocent and must be proven guilty.

My answer to the question is that I don’t defend the guilty or the innocent; I defend our system of justice and the U.S. Constitution. People don’t want to hear that, though. They think I’m just spouting platitudes. But if you believe in this country and our system of justice, then you have to accept the truth in that old adage about how it’s better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted.

Is it a perfect system? Of course not.

Is it the best system on earth? Probably.

Was Jimmy Chagra guilty? It really doesn’t matter that I don’t believe he was. Would I feel bad if I felt justice wasn’t served by the jury’s verdict? Hell no. My thoughts would be irrelevant. What I think, what I feel, is not part of the system. What matters is that “twelve good men tried and true” said that he was not guilty.

I think the system works. Most of the people I represented were never going to get offered a deal. The prosecution wanted
them convicted and in jail, or sentenced to death. I had a unique practice in that sense. Some studies suggest that 96 percent of all criminal cases are pleaded out. Guys like Chagra or Tony Spilotro were never going to be part of that statistic, because any deal the government was going to offer them wasn’t going to be palatable.

That being said, I was still happy to work the system and fight the fight. I enjoyed presenting a case to a jury. For the most part I think jurors are serious about what they do and try to listen and understand. That’s all you can ask.

Could the system be improved? Maybe, but only slightly. I would like a third jury option in criminal cases; what’s called the Scottish verdict. In Scotland, juries have three options: guilty, not guilty, or “not proven.” What the jury found in the Jimmy Chagra murder trial, I believe, was that the prosecution hadn’t proven its case.

O
ne night in October 1982, I had just finished a martini and was sitting at home relaxing when I got the phone call. I don’t remember who it was, but I’ll never forget the message. Someone had just tried to kill Lefty Rosenthal. Lefty had come out of Tony Roma’s restaurant and his Cadillac was parked in front. They planted a bomb in his car and nearly blew him away. They replayed the scene in the movie
Casino
. As you might imagine, Lefty was angry. The caller said Lefty had miraculously survived, and he wanted to see me.

I lived only two miles away, so I drove right over. I remember thinking, “This kind of stuff happens in other cities, not Las Vegas.”

When I drove up to the restaurant, there were black-and-whites all over the place. Flashing lights, yellow crime scene tape blocking the area. I never saw so many cops in one place.

Lefty was still there. They had him on a gurney and were in the process of transporting him to the hospital. His hair was completely singed, his face was blackened, and his eyes were glazed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Whoever did this, we’re gonna get this guy,” he said.

His Cadillac was mangled. It looked like something from one of those World War II movies where the tanks get blown up. What a scene! All the windows in Tony Roma’s were shattered. This happened around eight o’clock at night. This wasn’t some remote location; the restaurant was right across the street from a busy shopping center. Whoever set this up knew what they were doing. If this had happened during the day, when shoppers and tourists were all over the place, there’s no telling how many people might have been killed or injured. Parts of the car were found hundreds of feet away.

News accounts at the time said Lefty’s life was saved because of a metal plate that had been installed under the driver’s seat. The plate was put there to correct some kind of balancing problem, but it apparently served another purpose on the night the bomb went off by shielding Lefty from the explosion.

I was told, however, that what really saved Lefty was the fact that he reached in the car to turn on the key, rather than sliding behind the wheel. Why did he do this? Who knows? Maybe he wanted to get the air-conditioning working before he got in. Maybe he was being cautious. I never asked him.

That night he’d had dinner with Marty Kane and Ruby Goldstein, two local gamblers. He had left the restaurant intending to head home. Obviously, he didn’t make it.

Naturally, the question was who had planted the bomb? And the follow-up was, why?

Lefty Rosenthal was a very interesting guy. Unlike a lot of my other clients who wouldn’t say “boo” and who just listened, Rosenthal was very vocal. He fought everything; he was quoted in the papers and was always battling. When the Gaming Control Board banned him from one casino job, he would get another that didn’t require a license. Then they would cite him again. But he fought it all the way.

Lefty had a fascinating background. He grew up in Chicago, and the resume that law enforcement put together alleged that he eventually ran one of the biggest illegal bookmaking operations in the country for the Outfit. That’s apparently where he got to know Tony Spilotro. There were also allegations that he used bribes to fix sporting events. None of this was ever proven. In fact, the only conviction he had was a guilty plea to a minor gambling charge in Florida, where he moved his operation in the 1960s.

Shortly after arriving in Miami, he was subpoenaed to testify before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigation of gambling and organized crime. I think he invoked the Fifth Amendment thirty-seven times and never answered a relevant question. His name also surfaced in point-shaving scandals amid allegations that he bribed college basketball players. But again, none of this was proven.

He came to Las Vegas in the late 1960s, apparently to avoid the intense law enforcement scrutiny he was getting in Florida. His association with Spilotro and his reputation in the gambling underworld were what attracted the feds and the gambling regulators to him. They wanted him out of the casino industry.

He basically told them to go fuck themselves and fought them all the way.

He started his own television show. He would go on TV and blast the gaming regulators who were after him. It was a horrible show, but everyone watched it. People would run home on Saturday night so they could see what he was going to say next, and then everyone talked about it at work on Monday. He had major entertainers on the show, such as Sinatra and O.J. Simpson, as well as showgirls and bookmakers.

Rosenthal really understood sports betting, and he changed the way the sports books worked in Las Vegas. Before him, a bookie joint would be a hole-in-the-wall kind of place with a
bunch of guys standing around with cigarettes in their mouths. He made it comfortable and plush, with big-screen television sets and all kinds of information available. All the races from all over the country, all the ball games were there for viewing.

He was really good at whatever he went into, and he was always a step ahead. Whether you liked him or not, he was a force to contend with. For instance, before the bombing, when he was in charge of entertainment at the Stardust, he booked Siegfried and Roy.

Unlike Tony Spilotro, who never tried to be anything other than a street guy, Lefty considered himself a sophisticate. He always wore tailored clothes. It wouldn’t be the latest fashion, but it was what he liked. Always light colors. He was very much into himself; he couldn’t walk past a mirror without stopping to check out his appearance.

We used to meet on a daily basis because he had a lot of serious issues. They were trying to ban him from the casinos even though he didn’t have a serious criminal record. He worked for the Argent Corporation casinos (the feds would later charge that Argent was a front company for the mob). At different times he held posts at the Stardust, the Freemont, the Hacienda, and the Marina. Usually he’d take a job that did not require state licensing, something in entertainment or food. But whatever job he was assigned, the state would come in and demand that he get licensed. Sometimes they’d change the regulation because of him. It was a vendetta, and it wasn’t based on anything he had done, but rather on who he was.

That’s one of the problems I have always had with the Black Book and the approach that the regulators took. These holier-than-thou guys on the gaming board considered it guilt by association—guilty until proven innocent. I found that to be fundamentally unfair, but the courts upheld the regulators. I thought it was all bullshit.

Rosenthal and I would meet, sometimes at restaurants, but rarely in his office. He was concerned about bugs, and I didn’t like speaking to him in that atmosphere. When we would meet at his home, invariably he would be wearing one of those Hugh Hefner–type bathrobes. His wife, Geri, who was the nicer of the two by far, waited on him hand and foot. He would demean and berate her, acting as if he were entitled to do this.

He was also a perfectionist, which I guess made him a good businessman, but he had a mean streak. At the casino, if he saw a cigarette butt on the floor, he would pick it up. Then he would find out who was supposed to be picking it up and have that person fired. Even the way he raised his kids was very demanding. He made sure they got up every morning at 4
A
.
M
. to go to swimming lessons before school.

All these guys treated me well, but I learned a really important lesson when I first started representing Rosenthal. I was supposed to file something on a minor case, but the time had lapsed. I told him what had happened, and instead of berating me, he said, “As long as you tell me, it’s okay. Just don’t ever try to hide anything from me.”

A judge once told me the same thing: “When a lawyer tries to hide a mistake, it grows.”

It was a good lesson.

Rosenthal wasn’t an intellectual, but he was innately smart. He always wanted to know what I was doing. And I can tell you, it wasn’t a pleasant experience to be around him.

The car bombing only made things worse.

At the time, there was already a lot going on in the circles in which he and Tony Spilotro traveled. A year earlier, the cops and feds had made a big bust, bringing down several members of the so-called Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.

These were burglars who went about their business by cutting holes in the roofs or walls of establishments they had targeted.
Law enforcement believed these guys worked for Tony, and that some of the merchandise, particularly when there was a heist at a jewelry store, ended up for sale at The Gold Rush, a jewelry shop that Tony and his brother John had opened.

On the previous Fourth of July, 1981, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang had targeted Bertha’s Gifts and Home Furnishings. An informant had given up details about the planned heist, and the police and feds were waiting. Six members of the gang, including a former cop, were arrested.

One of the guys busted was Frank Cullotta, who the feds had identified as a “top associate and bodyguard” of Tony Spilotro, but I never believed that. I was having dinner with Tony once at Piero’s, a nice Italian restaurant, and he pointed to Cullotta, who was sitting across the room with some other men.

“Never say anything around that guy,” Tony said. It was clear he didn’t trust him.