judge last year, said he was not advocating that this indictment be related to the prior judge.

“The government lumped 62 people into one indictment and then had the case assigned to a judge of its choosing based on the fact that charges against a tiny fraction of the defendants have a tenuous link to an eight-year-old case,” said Ginsberg. “This denies the vast majority of the defendants – who have no connection to that case – their right to be tried before a randomly selected judge.” 

The lawyers’ protest may already have had an impact: Last week, Chief Judge Raymond Dearie issued a new administrative order mandating that all indictments are now to be assigned randomly by the clerk’s office, ending the procedure the feds used to get the case before Garaufis. 

Effective this past Monday, if either the prosecution or defense wishes to relate a case to an earlier one handled by a different judge, a motion must be made to the randomly assigned judge, who would determine whether such a move would result in a “substantial saving of judicial resources.” 

Corozzo, (right) who had sent Dearie a copy of his motion, and several other defense lawyers in the case said they were “hopeful” that the chief judge’s order would sway U.S.

Attorney Benton Campbell and Garaufis to randomly assign the case and go from there, but they declined other comment. 

Reached by Gang Land, Dearie, (left) a former U.S. Attorney (1982-1986)  who was elevated to Chief Judge last March, acknowledged receiving a copy of Corozzo’s brief but said the timing of his order – which he called a “partial time-out” – was “pure happenstance” and not intended to influence the pending motion that will be decided by Garaufis. 

“The Board of Judges has been considering restructuring the way civil and criminal cases are designated as ‘related cases’ for almost a year,” said Dearie, who just presided over a death penalty trial that ended in a conviction and is about to move into the penalty stage. 

“We have been meeting on and off for months about ways to make sure that the rules work as they were intended to, by providing for a substantial saving of judicial resources. I decided it best to suspend the full operation of the rule pending a further review by the Board of Judges and input from the defense bar and the U.S. Attorney’s office.” 

Sources familiar with the prosecution’s mindset told Gang Land that the U.S. Attorney’s office was aware the Board of Judges were preparing to change the rules governing “related cases,” but had acted properly under the prior court rules and intended to “stay the course.” A spokesman for Campbell (right) declined comment, noting that the office had until tomorrow to file its response to the motion to disqualify Garaufis.

Genovese capo Ciro Perrone caught a break at his sentencing for racketeering two weeks ago, but the aging gangster still stands a good chance of dying in prison.

No matter what actuarial tables you use – even figuring in reductions for good time and time already served – a five year prison term does not bode well for the ailing 87-year-old wiseguy. Manhattan federal prosecutor Elie Honig had asked for eight years. Perrone, who has already served eight months and will get nine more off for routine good behavior, won’t be eligible to be placed in a half way house until he’s 90, in March of 2011, six months before his likely scheduled release date.

But Perrone, whose last stretch behind bars ended in 1945, has already surpassed the two years he gave himself to live when he first learned that the feds were gunning for him in 2004, when he was 84.

“What the fuck can I live? Another year? Two years?” he told associates over dinner at his favored table at Don Peppe’s restaurant in Ozone Park, Queens as they talked about FBI subpoenas that had been distributed, noting that he’d rather die in jail with his friends than become a “rat.”

“Ciro Perrone waits to be moved to a prison hospital where he can be treated for his illnesses,” said lawyer Joseph Mure Jr. “And he looks forward to the day he returns to his favorite, and the best restaurant in Queens, Don Peppe’s.”

Meantime, Perrone’s cellmates can look forward to a wealth of great tales. For instance, they can ask him for his take on how Victoria Gotti’s gelled-up sons looked on “Growing Up Gotti.” “Like girls,” Perrone was heard bellowing on tape. But for a

hands-down great mobster tale they should be sure to ask him about how he once saved the life of the late Wilfred (Willie Boy) Johnson, a tough guy who later became “a rat” against the erstwhile TV teen idols’ late grandfather, mob moss John Gotti.

Here’s an excerpt from an expletive-laden April 25, 2005 story that Ciro told about the emergency surgery he was called on to perform in the 1960s on a bloodied Johnson right in the back room of Don Peppe’s, long before Willie Boy began running with the former Dapper Don. (To conserve space, we’ve deleted all but three of the expletives.)

We pick it up right after Tony Chaloots shot Willie Boy (left) once, “right in the head. Willie Boy, he comes in there bleeding like a stuck pig. I bring him in the back room. I had a dressing room in the back where the girls used to dress. I took a tablecloth, you know wrap it around him, the blood is coming all over.”

“So, now I’m trying to get the bullet out of his head. I got the knife, my brother Junior had the cigarette lighter. I said, ‘Burn it.’ Let me tell you, I went to get the bullet out of Willie’s head. He’s screaming like a....(I said) ‘What the fuck you hollering at? I’m trying to help you.’”

“So then I said, ‘Junior, there ain’t no way I can do anything with this guy. I can’t get the bullet out. He’s a baby. He’s screaming. Take a piece of tablecloth,’ a new tablecloth too, two tablecloths for that cocksucker. I said, ‘Wrap up his head, bring him by Lutheran Hospital on Jamaica Avenue.’ I says, ‘Don’t go in with him. Just take the tablecloth, let him walk in by himself. I said, ‘Willie, all you gotta do is when you walk in is say, when I was walking in the street, I caught this thing in my head. I’m in the neighborhood, so I come here.’ And that’s what he did.”

As Ciro completes his story, you can almost see him pick up a knife from the dinner table and start twisting it into Willie Boy’s skull as he says: “If I would have know that the fuckin’ guy, that he would be a rat, instead of taking it out with it, I would have went like this.”

A wide array of reporters and news organizations have stepped up to say that the public good will not be served if bus company executive Domenic F. Gatto, whose company earns more than $200 million a year in city school bus contracts,  is permitted to file and litigate a defamation suit against Gang Land in secret. 

Gang Land lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma (right) says he will present overwhelming evidence to the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn that there is no legal reason to keep the public in the dark about the lawsuit. The court is hearing Gatto’s appeal of a decision by a Staten Island Judge that denied his motion for a secret proceeding. The papers are due March 13. 

In a New York Times story about the suit on Monday, Margulis-Ohnuma said that Gatto’s attorneys “are seeking a restraining order in an action that is prospective, meaning that they haven’t even filed the lawsuit yet. I’ve never seen a libel suit where the entire record has been sealed.”  

According to remarks in court by a Gatto attorney last month, the CEO of the Staten Island-based Atlantic Express Transportation Corp. claims Gang Land defamed him in several columns that told of labor payoffs he allegedly began making to corrupt bus drivers union officials through his father’s mob ties in 1974. 

In an article posted on the Channel 4 News website last night, Gatto’s lawyer Peter R.  Silverman said his client was “absolutely not” linked to the Mafia and that sealed documents cited by Gang Land that linked Gatto to illegal activities contained “lies and fabrications made up by a convicted felon.”