Word: merola
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...meantime, an appealing new boutique hotel has opened close to the Spanish Steps. Aleph (Via di San Basilio) is conveniently located near the city's chic shops. Among them: Merola, Europe's oldest glove store (Via del Corso 143), where gloves are made as they were a century ago, entirely by hand. Elsewhere, some of Rome's best shopping is found in its sleek design stores. Ilaria Miani caters to an élite clientele (Via Monserrato 35), with everything from sugar bowls to bookcases. Spazio Sette (Via dei Barbieri 7) is three floors of cutting-edge design from...
...work to a minority-owned enterprise. The enterprise it chose was Jo-Pel Contracting and Trucking Corp., a firm set up by New York State Senator Joseph Galiber, who is black, and William (Billy the Butcher) Masselli, who has been identified by the FBI as a Mafia soldier. Merola charged that Jo-Pel was a mere front and that Schiavone had siphoned cash out of the contract by leasing Jo-Pel heavy equipment and receiving rental fees. Donovan, Schiavone and the other defendants contended that Jo-Pel was a legitimate firm, the leasing deal had been proper and, since...
...number of New York State legal experts said Merola and his assistant Bookin simply failed to substantiate their charges. Says Columbia University Law Professor Gerard Lynch: "The general feeling is that this is one of the dullest, longest and least persuasive presentations ever made." Joy Fennel, a juror who says she once leaned toward conviction, agrees: "I was frustrated the D.A. didn't do a better job." Several jurors also indicated sympathy with a defense contention that Merola, a Democrat, brought the charges just before the 1984 election in a politically motivated attempt to embarrass the Reagan Administration. Countered Merola...
...prosecution's efforts were further damaged, perhaps fatally, in April when Judge John Collins felt it necessary to clarify for Merola the legal theory on which the case would be presented. Merola wanted to broach two theories of what the jurors could consider to be larceny; Collins allowed them to weigh only one. Says a retired Manhattan judge who followed the trial: "It is pretty embarrassing for the prosecutor to have the judge straighten out for him the indictment and the legal theory behind it." The sensation of what was primarily a dozy trial came just after the jury began...
Donovan is expected to rejoin Schiavone, which is paying a $13 million legal bill. Ronald Schiavone, the firm's chairman, was named in Merola's original indictment, but after he suffered a heart attack last June, the prosecution agreed to try him at a later date. That trial is scheduled for July, but it is unlikely it will ever be held. For his part, Theodore Geiser, attorney for the Schiavone company, is reviving a suit for damages he filed two years ago against Merola, accusing the D.A. of publicly making prejudicial statements about the defendants beyond what was charged...