Two detectives who worked together on the Brooklyn robbery squad, and then lived as neighbors in retirement at Las Vegas, were together again yesterday, this time wearing prison garb inside a federal courtroom, preparing for what could be the city’s most sensational police corruption trial.

In an indictment unsealed in federal court last month, the former colleagues, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, are charged with working as hit men for mob figures while also serving as decorated officers in the New York Police Department. In all, the retired officers were charged with taking part in eight murders.

More recently, the officers have been linked to another murder victim: a chasidic jewelry dealer, Israel Greenfield, whose skeletal remains are believed to have been discovered by the authorities underneath a Brooklyn parking garage April 1.

If convicted on the murder charges, the former officers, who also face charges of drug dealing, will probably receive life sentences.

Mr. Eppolito, a hulking former bodybuilder who played bit parts in mob movies and wrote an autobiography called “Mafia Cop,” and Mr. Caracappa, his wiry ex-partner, both entered pleas of not guilty.

Their attorneys called the government’s likely witnesses in the case unreliable criminals aging in prison and desperate for release under the federal witness protection program.

Any expected testimony against the former police officers would be easily discredited, the attorneys argued, because the government’s likely primary witness, Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, a former underboss of the Luchese crime family who has admitted to taking part in 36 gangland executions, and another expected prosecution witness, Burton Kaplan, a garment industry clothier convicted of narcotics smuggling, had accepted deals from prosecutors.

Such offers make for bad witnesses, the defense attorneys said yesterday.

“These kinds of witnesses make deals, break deals, you can’t tell what their gonna do,” Mr. Eppolito’s lawyer, Bruce Cutler, best known for defending the former crime boss John Gotti, said.

Since their arrest at a Las Vegas restaurant last month, the former detectives have been held in federal custody. An application for bail is being considered, their attorneys said.

The defense attorneys requested that the indicted detectives also receive better treatment in federal custody. Mr. Caracappa was placed in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, with one hour to exercise in a cramped room with no exercise equipment, and phone privileges have been limited to one call per month, his attorney, Ed Hayes, said.

The prison was also cold, with guards wearing thermal underwear and jackets, but corrections officials had outfitted Mr. Caracappa only with cotton prison uniforms cut at the sleeves, Mr. Hayes said.

Mr. Eppolito, too, suffers from a lack of proper clothing provided by corrections officials, and he has not received proper medication for heart disease, Mr. Cutler said.

The senior federal trial judge overseeing the case, Jack Weinstein, said he feared the possibility of a “suicide” before trial and ordered the authorities to outfit the indicted cops with proper clothing and medicine.

In statements to Mr. Weinstein, the defense attorneys also said prosecutors engaged in unethical leaks to news outlets and were seeking to “poison” the jury pool.

While a trial date has not been set, prosecutors said yesterday they need 12 weeks to prove their case.

The next pretrial hearing is scheduled for June 7.

After the hearing, along with Mr. Cutler and Mr. Hayes, statements were made to the press by Mr. Eppolito’s daughter, Andrea Eppolito, who blew kisses to her father from her seat in the courtroom.

“My father is a good man, my father is a strong man,and he is innocent,” she said.

None of Mr. Caracappa’s relatives were present. His mother, 95, was too sick to make the trip, his lawyer, Mr. Hayes, said.

“Stephen Caracappa goes to bed at 8:30, maybe 9, every night,” Mr. Hayes said. “He doesn’t deal drugs. He drinks red wine.”