The mob lawyer who defended Gambino consigliere Frank “Frankie Loc” Locascio at his 1992 murder and racketeering trial with John Gotti admits he could have done a much better job representing his client.

There was just one problem: Gotti said he’d kill him if he did.

Now, defense attorney Anthony Cardinale, who failed to carry the day for Locascio at his three-month trial in Brooklyn Federal Court, will soon get an opportunity as a defense witness to win freedom for his former client.

To accomplish that, however, Mr. Cardinale will have to tarnish his reputation as a lawyer, face possible censure, or worse.

Too much time has passed for criminal charges to result, but there is always a possibility that the Gambino family might seek retribution against him, as it allegedly did by shooting radio host Curtis Sliwa. The Boston-based attorney could become a target if he admits on the witness stand, as he has told Locascio’s current legal team, that death threats from Gotti caused him to undermine his client’s defense.

Locascio, 72, is serving life without parole at a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts. Gotti died in a federal prison hospital in Illinois in June 2002.

As Gang Land first reported on November 14, 2002, Locascio claims Mr. Cardinale did much less than his best for him at trial because Gotti threatened to murder him if he pressed key witness Salvatore “Sammy Bull” Gravano about Locascio’s lack of involvement in the sole murder charge he faced, the October 4, 1990, slaying of mobster Louis DiBono.

Judge I. Leo Glasser initially ruled that Locascio’s motion was time-barred and had no merit. But last week, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals held otherwise, ordering Judge Glasser to hold an evidentiary hearing and listen to what Mr. Cardinale has to say about the Dapper Don’s threats and how they worked against his efforts for Locascio.

“No one would question that a credible death threat from a co-defendant ordering a lawyer to sacrifice a client’s interests constitutes an actual conflict of interest,” the panel wrote.

According to an affidavit submitted by Locascio attorney Thomas Harvey, Mr. Cardinale said Gotti threatened to kill him if he “individualized the interest of Locascio at Gotti’s expense” during his cross-examination of Gravano regarding the DiBono slaying. “Know why he’s dying?” Gotti had told Locascio in a conversation picked up by an FBI bug. “He’s gonna die because he refused to come in when I called. He didn’t do nothing else wrong. He’s gonna get killed because he disobeyed.”

Among other things, Mr. Harvey wrote, Gotti’s threats “forced” Mr. Cardinale to question witnesses about “facts and charges that involved only Gotti” and to focus on Gotti’s defense during the second half of his closing arguments to the jury.

“Cardinale never revealed the aforementioned facts to anyone, including Locascio, and the only reason he is coming forward at this time with the information is that Gotti’s death has lessened the threat to his life, although the threat has not been completely removed,” Mr. Harvey wrote on October 22, 2002.

On the advice of Mr. Cardinale’s lawyers and due to a continuing “concern for his welfare,” Mr. Cardinale refused to submit an affidavit at the time but said he would testify in open court about the death threat and its impact if he were subpoenaed to testify about it, Mr. Harvey wrote.

Mr. Cardinale was on trial and could not be reached for comment, an associate in his office told Gang Land. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Bourtin, who says Locascio’s motion is without merit and who will cross-examine Mr. Cardinale, declined to comment. Yesterday, Judge Glasser scheduled the evidentiary hearing for February 25.

The death threat came after the lawyer had begun a “hard-hitting” cross-examination of Gravano on the afternoon of March 11, 1992, focusing solely on crimes Locascio was accused of and using the words “my client” in his questions, according to court papers filed by appeals specialist Herald Price Fahringer. The next morning, however, Mr. Cardinale “dutifully obeyed Gotti’s orders” and “pulled his punches,” wrote Mr. Fahringer, citing several questions that were framed with the words, “Neither my client nor Mr. Gotti.”

At the evidentiary hearing, the appeals court noted, Locascio must show that the death threat to his attorney prompted Mr. Cardinale to place his own personal safety over Locascio’s interests, thus causing a “lapse in representation” at trial.

If he wants to help his former client, Mr. Cardinale will have to do a good job on the witness stand.

The key issue “turns on Cardinale’s testimony and credibility” and must be determined by Judge Glasser, the appeals court wrote.

At trial, Judge Glasser heard Gotti tell Frankie Loc in a tape-recorded conversation why he ordered three murders – including a 1986 slaying while he was incarcerated. The jurist will decide next month whether the Dapper Don threatened to kill Mr. Cardinale and whether the lawyer had good reason to fear that Gotti was willing and capable of carrying out his threat if he were crossed, even if he were convicted and imprisoned for life.

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Before testimony began in the 1992 trial, Judge Glasser triggered a massive 13-month FBI probe about the centerpiece of the case, the spectacular 1985 Midtown slaying of Mafia boss Paul Castellano that was orchestrated by the late Dapper Don.

The investigation wasn’t into the actual murder but surrounded those who provided details of it – including the fact that Gotti and Gravano were backup shooters and parked at the scene when the hit took place – to yours truly and Gene Mustain, who wrote about it in the January 28, 1992, New York Daily News.

Nearly 200 suspects -including a late New York FBI boss, Jim Fox – agreed to take a polygraph examination and be questioned, according to almost 300 pages of FBI documents released last week to the Associated Press under a Freedom of Information request.

The FBI began the probe, which also tried to determine the sources of an exclusive follow-up story three days later about another Gotti-ordered killing, after an angry Judge Glasser called then-FBI Director William Sessions on February 7 to demand an inquiry, according to AP reporter Larry McShane.

Those questioned, Mr. McShane wrote, included federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan, FBI agents from eight offices from New York to California, as well as New York City police officers and prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

During the probe, the FBI came up with some pretty heady stuff, including this essentially accurate report – there is an error that Gang Land readers should spot – in a July 17, 1992, memo: “Capeci has been identified recently on national television as possibly the best crime reporter in the nation. In addition to regular news articles relating to crime in New York, recently almost always La Cosa Nostra related, he and Mustain write a weekly column entitled ‘Gang Land.’ Capeci is known to have developed many sources of information over the years in law enforcement, in prosecutors’ offices and even in LCN.”

In the end, according to the documents, a final FBI report fingered three possible suspects in the law enforcement community – none within the FBI – but concluded that “no one was identified as being the source of the leaks.”