By George Anastasia
For Bigtrial.net
Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino was sprung from jail last month after a appellate court panel vacated a U.S. District Court order sentencing him to four months in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release.
This morning the panel issued a detailed report explaining its findings. Merlino's release, on April 24, came with only 10 days remaining on his four-month sentence.
"They owe me four months," Merlino quipped during a phone interview this afternoon, adding, "I hope they just leave me alone. I'm not doing anything wrong."
Last month, when the appellate court announced it was vacating the lower court order that sent Merlino back to jail, his lawyer, Edwin Jacobs Jr. declared that "my client has served a four-month sentence for doing absolutely nothing wrong."
But that's not exactly the legal takeaway from the split decision of the appellate court that was made public today.
Merlino, who is back in Boca Raton where he is the front man for a posh Italian restaurant named -- what else? - MERLINO'S, won on a technicality.
The appellate court never took up the broader defense argument that there was not sufficient evidence to support the allegation that Merlino had knowingly consorted with fellow South Philadelphia mobster John Ciancaglini in a Boca Raton cigar bar while on supervised release.
Instead, in a split 2-to-1 decision, the appellate judges found that Merlino had not been served a summons prior to the expiration of his three-year probation period and as a result, the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia no longer had jurisdiction.
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