John Scarpa, Jr., a criminal defense attorney, was sentenced
today in federal court in Brooklyn to 30 months’ imprisonment and fined $10,000
by United States District Judge Carol Bagley Amon for bribing a witness to
commit perjury in a double homicide trial in Suffolk County Supreme Court. Scarpa was convicted following a four-day
trial in May 2019. Scarpa, who will be
disbarred, had been practicing law in New York since 1982, and was a prosecutor
at three district attorneys’ offices in the metropolitan area before entering
private practice in 2003.
Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern
District of New York, and William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant
Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office
(FBI), announced the sentence.
“As a defense
attorney and former prosecutor, Scarpa was sworn to uphold the law he so
egregiously subverted,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. “Scarpa went from practicing law to breaking
the law and will now pay a price for his crime.” Mr. Donoghue thanked the Queens County
District Attorney’s Office for its assistance during the investigation.
As proven at trial, Scarpa plotted with co-conspirator
Charles Gallman to bribe a convicted murderer, Luis Cherry, to testify in
support of Scarpa’s client, who was charged with the execution-style murders of
two men. Cherry then falsely testified
at trial that he alone committed the second of the two murders, and that
Scarpa’s client was innocent. In
exchange for his testimony, Scarpa and Gallman promised to help Cherry with the
appeal of his own murder conviction, and to spread word in the prison system
that Cherry was not a government informant.
Despite the false testimony, the trial judge found Scarpa’s client
guilty of both murders.
The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s
Organized Crime and Gangs Section.
Assistant United States Attorneys Andrey Spektor, Lindsay K. Gerdes and
Keith D. Edelman are in charge of the prosecution.
The Defendant:
JOHN SCARPA, JR.
Age: 66
Hauppauge, New York
E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 18-CR-123(S-1) (CBA)
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