| After six years of
legal wrangling, lgendary New York City Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante was
arraigned in 1996 on a litany of federal murder, labor racketeering and other charges
following a ruling that he had been feigning insanity for 30 years in an effort to
avoid prosecution for his Mafia activities. Gigante underwent open heart surgery Dec. 10,
1996. He was released from the hospital a month later. He went to trial that summer, was
convicted of racketeering, and sentenced to 12 years in prison in December, 1997. He's due
out in 2007.   Nearly
40 years ago, on orders from Don Vito Genovese, Vincent (Chin) Gigante, (right) then a
wet-behind-the ears but ambitious assassin, tried to take out Mafia-fixer Frank Costello
(left) -- the Prime Minister of Organized Crime. Today, Chin is the family's official
boss. He has been at the top of the Genovese crime family since the early 1980's. At
trial, he was acquitted of ordering six mob slayings and he beat the rap for conspiring to
kill Gotti as retribution for his assassination of Castellano on statute of limitations
grounds. (GOTTI: Rise and Fall provides insight about the murder plot against Gotti,
disclosing that two members of Gotti's inner circle joined in Chin's scheme and were
poised to take over the Gambino family if the murder plot had succeeded.) Chin's lawyers
insisted Gigante was crazy but prosecutors, Gravano, mobster Joe Black, and ultimately a
federal jury decided Chin was the head of a sophisticated bid rigging and kickback scheme
and found him guilty of labor racketeering. Meanwhile, his original team of federal
prosecutors moved on to other things, and one, Charles Rose, passed away in 1998. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Gigante's conviction in January, 1999. A few months later, Chin's lawyers and federal
prosecutors were back in court again after prosecutors learned that the Gigante family had
hired a sexy operative to try and obtain some dirt on the
anonymous jurors who convicted the Chin.
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