Legendary N.J. attorney who defended mobsters, TV stars dies at 82 (original) (raw)

Miles Feinstein, the flamboyant defense attorney who worked New Jersey courtrooms for nearly 60 years on behalf of accused mobsters, movie stars, and everyday folks accused of breaking the law, died Saturday after a long battle with cancer.

Feinstein, whose client list over the years included the actor Troy Donohue, the reality TV star Joe Guidice, and Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, combined a sharp legal mind with a flair for courtroom theatrics. He kept working until he died Saturday at Morristown Medical Center at the age of 82.

Feinstein’s wife, Peggy, confirmed her husband’s death in a Facebook post.

“He fought against cancer for over eight years and defied all odds,” she wrote. “He was passionate about the law, he loved being in the courtroom, he loved being involved in trials. He loved fighting for his clients.”

The lawyers who worked with him and against him said Feinstein was a formidable foe in the courtroom, with a special talent for poking holes in the testimony of witnesses presented by the state. He also had a flair for the dramatic, frequently flailing his arms in the air while appealing to a juror’s sense of fairness, hoping to raise enough reasonable doubt to gain an acquittal.

“Prosecutors greatly feared him, judges highly respected him, and juries truly loved him,” said attorney John Saykanic, Feinstein’s longtime law partner. “I believe juries sometimes acquitted his clients because they did not want to convict Miles. It was as if a guilty verdict would be sending Miles to prison and this the jury did not want. This is how deeply he connected with juries.”

As good as he was at trial, Feinstein, like most defense attorneys, would try to avoid it. He would file a flurry of pre-trial motions, seeking to suppress evidence or weaken the state’s case enough to avoid trial and set up either a dismissal or a more favorable plea bargain.

Sumana Mitra, a retired Passaic County prosecutor, recalled a routine drug case that Feinstein buried in a blizzard of pre-trial motions. “He was as amazing as he was frustrating,” she said. “His trial theatrics, his brilliant mind, his sharp wit and likability with jurors - I respect that greatly, and he will be always be a legend.”

Based in Clifton, Feinstein handled thousands of cases over the years, defending clients on charges ranging from driving while intoxicated to murder. His initial claim to fame was in defending alleged mobsters. One of his early acquittals involved an alleged mobster, Paul Kavanaugh, who was charged with killing his wife.

Then, in the late 1980s, Feinstein and Saykanic were on the team of lawyers that defended 20 reputed members of the Lucchese crime family on federal racketeering charges.

The government brought the charges against the alleged mobsters under the federal RICO Act, which allowed the prosecution to introduce evidence of racketeering based on evidence gathered from more than 400 FBI wiretaps, plus the testimony of nearly 100 witnesses.

The trial, which was held in U.S. District Court in Newark before Judge Harold A. Ackerman, began in November of 1986 and lasted nearly two years,­ but it took the jury only 14 hours to acquit all 20 defendants.

The case came to known as “The Boys from New Jersey,” after a book written by Robert Rudolph, the then Star-Ledger reporter who covered the trial. At times, the trial bordered on a circus, with alleged wise guys taking the witness stand to point the finger at one another, then folding up on cross-examination.

Rudolph reported that at one point, Feinstein was cross-examining one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, a mob loan shark-turned-informant who had been release from prison. Feinstein leaned up against the witness, then dipped into his pocket and pulled out a “Get out of jail free” card from the game Monopoly.

Although all 20 defendants walked free, the trial offered a deep look inside mob life in New Jersey ­and the characters who took the witness stand looked a lot like those seen on television in “The Sopranos” just a few years later.

Feinstein also represented Joe Giudice, the Montville man who was one of the stars of the reality TV show “Real Housewives of New Jersey.” The show offered a glimpse at the glitzy lifestyle of the would-be-rich living large in suburbia ­until Giudice and his wife, Teresa, tumbled into bankruptcy and were charged with concealing income from the government.

Joe Giudice initially faced up to 35 years in prison on federal bankruptcy and wire fraud charges. But under a plea bargain worked out by Feinstein, he was sentenced to 41 months in prison. Teresa Giudice received a 15-month sentence.

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Richard Cowen may be reached at rcowen@njadvancemedia.com.

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