Mobsters make offers legal doctors can't refuse

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Italian mobsters feeling the heat know it's not a good lawyer they need when facing justice, but a pliant doctor.

A new book by Corrado de Rosa shows how some of Italy's most notorious gangsters have faked everything from mental illness to blindness with the help of bent medics.

Mob doctors have trained their clients to mimic illnesses and even given them drugs to create symptoms.

The book, I Medici della Camorra (The Doctors of the Camorra), tells how physicians supply jailed mobsters with appetite suppressants to help convince judges they are suffering from depression or anorexia.

Naples mobster Ettore Russo was allowed out of prison for treatment after it was claimed he had depression. He then popped out between treatment sessions to assassinate someone.

Camorra boss Giuseppe Setola, while on trial accused of being the Casalesi clan's killing machine, received a dubious diagnosis of macular degeneration blindness. While visiting an eye clinic, Setola fled to Campania to lead a killing spree where 18 died.

De Rosa, himself a doctor and expert witness, also reveals how corrupt psychiatrists are paid to falsely cast doubt on the mental faculties of informants.

Corrupt medical testimonies do not come cheap, with mobsters paying anything from €2000 to €50,000 ($3700 to $92,400).

"The trouble is, expert medical witnesses have a choice of accepting €100 to tell the truth for the state or €50,000 to lie for the Mob. For many corruptible ones the Mob money is irresistible," de Rosa said.

Not all the attempts to win leniency with faked medical reports have worked.

Naples mobster Francesco Schiavone was sentenced to life in prison in June 2008 after a 10-year process that involved expert witnesses pleading his depression and anorexia as mitigating factors. Between the first trial and the final unsuccessful appeal, five people involved in the case were murdered, including an interpreter.

Some of the malleable expert witnesses have themselves met a sticky end. In 1981, a criminologist and shrink-for-hire, Aldo Semerari, had his head split in half with a meat-cleaver by Camorra boss Umberto Ammaturo, who took exception to Semerari perjuring himself on behalf of hated Mafia rivals.

- INDEPENDENT