Prosecutors with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office seemed almost giddy after a spirited court appearance last week on the pending murder case against former FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio. 

Under aggressive urging by lead prosecutor Michael Vecchione during a pre-trial conference, Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach agreed to put the trial off until September 10 – a move that will allow Vecchione and a co-prosecutor to enjoy previously scheduled summer vacations. 

Outside the courtroom, prosecutors Vecchione and teammates Kevin Richardson and Monique Ferrell joked about the judge’s decision to slightly relax the former agent’s bail restrictions on weekends. 

On a request by DeVecchio’s lawyer, Douglas Grover, Reichbach had extended the ex-agent’s curfew on Friday and Saturday nights from 9 PM to 1 AM.

“Now he can see ‘The Departed,’ ” cracked one prosecutor, referring to the Oscar-winning movie that is loosely based on the corruption of a veteran FBI agent by a Boston mob associate, according to an account by sharp-eared New York Post reporter Patrick Gallahue. 

But what DeVecchio does with the additional four hours should be the least of

the concerns that Vecchione (left) and his co-prosecutors have about the 13-month old indictment that charges the former agent with four murders from 1984 to 1992.

Reichbach also voiced a growing impatience with prosecutors, making several major rulings against the DA’s office. Referring to an April 6 court filing that argued against a pretrial hearing in the case, the judge said “specious” was the “only word to describe” much of their reasoning in the brief. He termed one argument – that it was difficult for the DA’s office to secure testimony by federally protected witnesses – as “patent nonsense.”

In the toughest blow to the sensational case brought by Brooklyn DA Joe Hynes, Reichbach severed the case of DeVecchio’s lone codefendant, John Sinagra, and scheduled his trial to precede the ex-agent’s. This will force prosecutors to use their key witness, Linda Schiro, three months before she takes the stand against the former G-man, enabling his lawyers to better prepare for her testimony.

Schiro is the former lover of Gregory Scarpa Sr., the late Colombo capo who was a longtime informer for DeVecchio. She claims to have taken part or overheard discussions between the men that tie the ex-agent to the four murders alleged in the indictment.

Schiro has also fingered Sinagra, a former relative by marriage, in one of the slayings, the 1990 murder of Patrick Porco, 18. Sinagra allegedly killed Porco, a buddy of her son Joseph, after DeVecchio alerted Scarpa that Porco (right) was about to cooperate with police and implicate the younger Scarpa in a murder. Sinagra’s trial begins June 11.

Reichbach also scheduled a pre-trial hearing to decide whether Sinagra’s case was tainted by a pre-indictment delay of more than 10 years, and should be dismissed. The judge reversed an earlier ruling and set a hearing for May 16 after prosecutors disclosed that, contrary to

prior assertions that Sinagra (left) first became a suspect in late 2005, the DA’s office had learned of his alleged involvement in Porco’s slaying in 1995.

Prosecutors scored one win when Reichbach agreed that a full blown hearing was not required on defense charges that the Brooklyn DA’s office had improperly obtained its indictment by using testimony for which DeVecchio had received immunity, until after his trial.

But the judge also set the stage for a major pre-trial confrontation between the former agent’s defense team and Angela Clemente and Peter Lance, two DeVecchio gadflies whom Grover has described as part of a “cottage industry of self-styled forensic investigators and journalists” that were used by the DA’s office to jump start its probe.

Clemente, who describes herself as a forensic analyst, was cited by Vecchione last year as a driving force behind the DeVecchio indictment. Lance is an author who claims in a book and on his website that he helped the DA’s probe. Both have stated they will fight subpoenas from Grover and co-counsel Mark Bederow that require them to testify about their use of DeVecchio’s immunized testimony in their research and the impact it may have had in the DA’s probe.

The judge specifically mentioned Clemente and Lance as witnesses he expects to testify at a hearing that is limited to testimony from persons who have had involvement in the investigation but will not be called as trial witnesses. The hearing is set for August 8.

Luchese capo Louis (Louie Bagels) Daidone, who is serving life without parole for murder, was sentenced last week to an additional 51 months for ordering one of his underlings to beat up a Brooklyn landlord in a petty dispute over loud music.

Like Gang Land, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis (right) thought the notion of adding any additional prison time to the life sentence of the onetime acting boss might be overkill, not to mention a complete waste of time and judicial resources.

Not so, said federal prosecutor Thomas Seigel, the head of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s organized crime unit. He told Garaufis it was more like a government insurance policy, one that would kick in if Daidone were to somehow win a reversal of his conviction for whacking two mob associates more than 15 years ago. 

Daidone’s attorney, Anthony Lombardino, noting that his client’s murder conviction was recently affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, had asked that the pending racketeering case be dismissed. Seigel refused, citing the remote possibility that Louie Bagels could locate previously unknown evidence to overturn his conviction.

A compromise was worked out. Daidone (left) pleaded guilty to extortion, the government dropped the racketeering charge, and agreed to accept the lowest prison term called for by sentencing guidelines, with the caveat that it be consecutive to his life term.  

In the unlikely event that Daidone, 61, can find some “newly discovered” evidence that upsets his murder rap, he would begin his 51 month sentence. In the end, there is some hope, some light at the end of the tunnel for Louie Bagels. But not much.

Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser (right) made good on a promise to come down hard on a murderous mob turncoat with an apparently uncontrollable fetish for plasma TVs.

Two weeks ago, Glasser gave Frank Smith five years in prison and five years of supervised release stemming from arrests in two states involving the sleek wide-screened TVs while he was living under the auspices of the federal Witness Protection Program.

Smith, (left) whose cooperation led to the conviction of a top Colombo mobster for the 1987 murder of an aging civil lawyer, had initially received a year of house arrest for taking part in that slaying and four other killings. The soft sentence had enraged ex-prosecutor William Aronwald whose father was mistaken for him and killed by Smith and two cohorts in 1987.