Onetime acting Genovese boss Liborio (Barney) Bellomo has to be kicking himself for taking what seemed like a sweet plea deal: about four years in prison for a host of racketeering charges, including a 1998 murder for which he once faced the death penalty. 

The deal looked a lot less attractive last Thursday when the cagy gangster learned that the government’s murder case had fallen apart and that the feds were concerned that he could win an outright acquittal. And Barney got the news directly from the horse’s mouth. 

At a remarkable court session, assistant U.S attorney Miriam Rocah revealed that authorities were also fearful that their key witness against Barney, the aging and ailing turncoat mob lawyer, Peter Peluso, might not be able to survive a trial appearance. 

Even if Peluso, who suffers “a serious kidney condition,” was able to get through tension-filled court sessions every other day – he undergoes dialysis treatment “three times a week several hours a day and it essentially wipes him out for that day,” said Rocah – the case was still in dire straits, the veteran prosecutor declared. 

She disclosed that the feds were never able to locate prison records they “were hoping to get” to back up the murder charge, which was essentially based on

"one conversation between Peluso and Bellomo” that allegedly took place while Barney was housed in a New Jersey state prison in 1998. 

“It was, frankly, kind of a bitter pill for us to swallow,” said Rocah, who added: “It basically was a weighing of particular litigation risks that became more clear to us as we prepared and got closer to trial against the certainty of this conviction, albeit not the conviction we would have wanted, but a conviction.”

Rocah and her co-prosecutors were forced to publicly disclose the failings of their case by Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, (left) a usually pro-government jurist. He called them on the carpet to explain why he should accept a guilty plea that would mean about “three and a half to four years” behind bars for a mobster originally charged with murder.

Kaplan is a dogmatic judge who has been criticized by the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals for overstepping his bounds. Last month, the appeals panel slammed him for instructing 16 defendants in a $2 billion tax fraud case to file a civil suit against their employer, and then declaring that he would preside over the new case using a mix of criminal and civil rules of evidence.

Kaplan, who had accepted a 10-year plea deal from Barney in 1997 to resolve

a 1991 murder charge that the gangster vehemently denied, couldn’t wait to voice his intention of rejecting the current plea bargain.

A day earlier, during a conference with lawyers for the Genovese family’s current acting boss, Daniel (The Lion) Leo – with neither Bellomo nor his attorneys in attendance – Kaplan told Rocah’s co-prosecutor, Eric Snyder, that he was inclined to reject Bellomo’s plea deal, and instructed Snyder to plan to bring Bellomo, 50, and Leo, 66, (right) to trial together in November. 

When Snyder informed the judge that the charges against both mobsters were unrelated and that he hadn’t even considered consolidating their cases, Kaplan declared sternly: “Think about it.” 

Just to make sure Snyder understood exactly how long and hard he should think about it, Kaplan brought the subject up again after concluding preliminary discussions about Leo’s bail status with his attorneys. 

“I am going to see you tomorrow,” the judge said. “I am very interested in why I should take a plea to a mail fraud. This is the second time the government has

done that with Bellomo before me. I am mighty curious as to why I should accept it?” 

The following day, Rocah, who stressed an inability to prove the murder charge rather than Bellomo’s innocence, recited the government’s view. His lawyers, Richard Levitt and Barry Levin, gave numerous reasons why they believed Barney was indeed innocent of the slaying of capo Ralph Coppola. (left)

Levitt noted that in Peluso’s first interview with the FBI, when he was selling himself as a potential witness, he told agents that Bellomo had nothing to do with the murder. Not only were there no records of any Peluso visits to Bellomo, added Levin, three prison guards would testify that the visiting area bore no resemblance to the layout that Peluso described.

As it happens, the feds got their deal after all. In a one page ruling – without making any mention of his prior reservations – Kaplan decided Tuesday that the feds had good reason to offer Barney the plea bargain. 

Bellomo is currently serving a four-year stretch as a result of a separate plea bargain, this one struck in Brooklyn Federal Court. That term ends in 13 months. He will be sentenced on the mail fraud case on July 9.

As Gang Land disclosed two weeks ago, Barney’s plea deal states that he and the feds agree that his sentencing guidelines call for between 41 and 51 months behind bars and that neither his lawyers nor the government’s will recommend any specific prison term. 

In her efforts to mollify Kaplan’s concerns that Bellomo wasn’t getting his just desserts, Rocah may have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of that agreement.

In the end, she noted, when the prison terms of Bellomo's three plea deals were added together, Barney would serve 17 consecutive years, if Kaplan were to ignore the sentencing guidelines and mete out a five year sentence. 

“I mean,” explained Rocah, “he’s facing up to five years here, so I’m using that outside limit, because it’s a five-year statutory max. He could serve up to 17 years.” 

For the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, it’s déjà vu, all over again, as another murder indictment related to the pending prosecution of retired FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio is in danger of being thrown out. 

Still reeling from last week’s stunning dismissal of a murder charge tied to the ex-agent’s case, Brooklyn prosecutors are locked in a court battle to convince a judge to uphold the validity of a second murder indictment and not toss it for the same reasons the charges against John (Johnny Loads) Sinagra (right) were dropped.

In 2006, Craig Sobel was accused of the October 31, 1989 slaying of Dominic Masseria, but an attorney for him, Toni Marie Angeli, contends that prosecutors violated her client’s rights to a speedy trial by failing to investigate evidence that linked him to the killing within months of the murder. 

In court papers, Angeli notes that Sobel was quizzed about the murder several times between December of 1989 and July 25, 1990, and that during that same period he was fingered by a participant in the slaying. 

By ignoring these leads for 16 years, Angeli argues that prosecutors made it difficult for Sobel, (left) who is now a commercial fisherman based in Florida, to prepare a defense. This violated his right to a speedy trial and mandates that the indictment be dismissed, she wrote. 

The hearing, which began earlier this month, resumes next week before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach. 

Meanwhile, sources said that the DA's office, which filed a notice that it would appeal Reichbach’s dismissal of the Sinagra indictment, has decided an appeal would be fruitless and will forego that option. Instead, it will focus efforts on Sobel’s ongoing pre-trial hearing and a subsequent one in the DeVecchio (right) case that is slated to take place in August. 

A spokesman for the District Attorney’s office declined to comment about the office’s current intentions in the Sinagra case.