Framed

Because even hoods are innocent from time to time.

BOSTON-In a stinging rebuke of the FBI, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the government to pay a record judgement of nearly $102 million because agents withheld evidence that would have kept four men from spending decades in prison for a mob murder they did not commit.

Judge Nancy Gertner told a packed courtroom that agents were trying to protect informants when they encouraged a witness to lie, then withheld evidence they knew could prove the four men were not involved in the 1965 murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan, a small-time thug shot in an alley.

Gertner said Boston FBI agents knew mob hitman Joseph "The Animal" Barboza lied when he named Joseph Salvati, Peter Limone, Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco as Deegan's killers. She said the FBI considered the four "collateral damage" in its war against the Mafia, the bureau's top priority in the 1960s.

Tameleo and Greco died behind bars, and Salvati and Limone spent three decades in prison before they were exonerated in 2001. Salvati, Limone and the families of the other men sued the federal government for malicious prosecution.

"One day, when I have a long gray beard and two or three marbles rolling around upstairs, then they'll let me out."