Ralph “the Undertaker” Balsamo is a gregarious Genovese family gangster who runs funeral homes. He would rather be caught dead than say anything bad about Liborio “Barney” Bellomo.

The same could be said of Bellomo’s brother-in-law, mob associate Gerald Fiorino. He has no real problems with Barney, who married his sister and has long been a devoted husband and doting father of three children.

Both are Bellomo’s co-defendants in a 34-defendant indictment, and they hope to be far away from Barney when the one-time acting Genovese crime boss goes to trial next spring on racketeering conspiracy charges that include murder and obstruction of justice.

In court papers, Balsamo and Fiorino have asked that they be tried separately from Bellomo, who is accused of taking part in the 1998 execution murder of acting capo Ralph Coppola.

The charges against Balsamo aren’t exactly chicken feed. They include labor racketeering, witness tampering, gambling, gun charges, and drug dealing. Fiorino faces extortion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice counts. Unlike Bellomo, neither man is accused of killing anyone, a vital and important distinction they want to be sure their jurors don’t overlook.

So-called severance motions are rarely successful, even in cases in which many defendants are charged with separate, unrelated crimes that are all alleged to be part of the same racketeering enterprise, which in this case is the Genovese crime family. These motions have a better than usual chance of success, however, primarily because the feds are seeking the most horrific possible penalty for Barney — his death by lethal injection.

In similar cases, most federal judges have severed defendants from trials in which a co-defendant was facing capital punishment, Fiorino’s lawyers, Michael Rosen and Jean Graziano, who have petitioned a Manhattan federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, to sever their client from Barney’s case, say.

The lawyers acknowledge that Fiorino is charged with “serious crimes,” but they assert that he would suffer a “unique prejudice” by a joint trial with his brother-in-law because the jury would have to be “death-qualified” — that is, a panel without any members who are opposed to capital punishment.

This prejudice, the lawyers wrote, was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, which stated in a ruling involving a death penalty case in Kentucky that so-called death-qualified juries were “more conviction-prone” than those in non-death cases.

Lawyers for six other co-defendants, including Albert “Chinky” Facchiano — who at age 96 has the distinction of being the oldest “made man” to be awaiting trial in a racketeering case — have filed similar severance motions, raising many of the same legal issues.

Balsamo’s attorney, Edward Hayes, came up with an intriguing additional reason why his client would be unduly prejudiced by standing trial “alongside a defendant who is facing the death penalty” for murder.

“The potential for spillover prejudice from this murder charge will be even greater since the Government insists on giving Mr. Balsamo the nickname ‘Undertaker,’ which is his profession, not his nickname,” Mr. Hayes wrote, noting that Balsamo is a licensed funeral home director who works in his family’s funeral homes in the Bronx and Westchester.

Assistant U.S. attorneys Eric Snyder, Jonathan Kolodner, and Miriam Rocah did not return calls for comment. Gang Land expects them to cite Supreme Court decisions that permit joint trials of capital punishment defendants alongside others and push to prosecute all defendants at the same trial, currently slated to begin in May.

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In his court papers, Mr. Hayes belittled tape-recorded evidence that prosecutors had cited to characterize Balsamo as a danger to the community. The lawyer argued that his client was not violent, but merely “a talkative person” with a “propensity to repeat phrases in conversation.”

A judge disagreed with the lawyer’s contention, and Balsamo has been detained since his arrest last February. But there is little dispute that the Undertaker likes to talk, that undertaker is at least one of his professions, and that he occasionally repeats things.

When he was arrested, he drummed up a discussion with investigators for the Westchester district attorney’s office who were part of a task force that arrested him, according to an arrest report obtained by Gang Land. At one point, the Undertaker asked whether they had worked for a former district attorney, Jeanine Pirro. A few months earlier, Ms. Pirro had been soundly defeated in a run for attorney general.

After some small talk, during which the investigators told Balsamo that they now worked for District Attorney Janet DiFiore, they asked Balsamo “how a guy from the Bronx opened a funeral parlor in Harrison, New York.”

“Jeanine,” Balsamo replied, repeating her name a second time before elaborating further, according to the report.

“Balsamo continued that Al Pirro was Balsamo’s father’s attorney and that he helped the Balsamos obtain the funeral home. Balsamo continued that the Pirros were friends of his family for many years,” detective Dennis Gallego wrote.

Ms. Pirro could not be reached for comment. Mr. Pirro did not respond to a request for comment about Balsamo’s remarks.

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Balsamo, who allegedly oversaw a large-scale cocaine distribution network that operated in the Bronx and Westchester between April and December of last year, is the only defendant in the case who is charged with being part of the mob-connected drug ring.

Last week, the last of 13 co-defendants charged in the drug-trafficking aspects of the 45-count indictment copped plea bargains, with almost all beginning their prison sentences as part of the deals their lawyers worked out with the feds.

Eleven defendants who joined their alleged leader behind bars before Christmas will receive sentences of between five years and 10 years; two less culpable defendants who face about three years in prison are slated to begin doing their time next year.

Michael “Chunk” Londonio, an accused middle manager of the drug operation, was killed last December during a shootout in which he wounded two New York State troopers, one seriously, when they sought to arrest him on cocaine trafficking and weapons charges.

Two months later, Balsamo acknowledged an affiliation with the deceased Londonio during his chat with investigators, according to the arrest report. When prodded about advice he had given Chunk about how to conduct himself in the ongoing drug business, Balsamo replied: “Oh, you guys know about that?”

This column and other news of organized crime will appear today at ganglandnews.com.