Continued...



Tuesday, in a stinging setback to the government, U.S. District Judge Jose A. Gonzales Jr. dismissed all charges against the Cacciatores and boat captain William Dawson shortly after the U.S. attorney's office rested its case. When the judge announced the acquittals in his Fort Lauderdale courtroom, the Cacciatores hugged their lawyers, then hugged each other. Diane Cacciatore wept and her husband, a close confidant of former Sheriff Nick Navarro during his 14 years on the force, fought back tears.



'I'm very happy,' said Cacciatore. 'I'm grateful.'



Dawson, smiling as he left the courtroom, said, ' I couldn't feel better.'



The judge granted defense lawyers' motion for a defected verdict, sending jurors home on the fifth day of the trial and dealing another blow to the government's attack on public corruption in Broward.



It was the second time in two years a federal judge has tossed out a Broward corruption case. Last year, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp dismissed 14 mail fraud and two tax charge against former Port Everglades Commissioner Walter Browne.



In the Cacciatore case, prosecutors alleged the former sheriff's captain and his wife conspired with Dawson to steal $157,000 from the estate of the late Massachusetts millionaire George Page, Diane's uncle. 



Each of the Cacciatores was charged with three counts of mail fraud, three counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy. Dawson was charged with three counts of mail fraud and one of conspiracy. They are the only people indicted so far in an extensive corruption investigation of the Navarro administration. The feds accused the Cacciatores of lying when they said 'Uncle George' secretly gave them mortgage proceeds as a gift shortly before he died of cancer. Dawson provided the key testimony in a civil lawsuit that swayed Broward Circuit Judge JamesM. Reasbeck to award the Cacciatores the disputed money.



At trial, Dawson recalled a conversation he said he had with Page: 'He said, That mine is for Ronnie.'



Prosecutors said Reasbeck was not informed that Dawson had previously been arrested by Ronald Cacciatore on a cocaine trafficking charge and had worked with the Broward Sheriff's Office as an informant. The trial judge also was not informed that Dawson was on probation and expected Ronald Cacciatore to assist him in securing his early release from probation.'



'William Dawson had a motive to lie and did lie in that case,' prosecutor William Shockley told jurors in his opening remarks.



But the case fell apart under questioning and legal arguments from dense lawyers Zimet, repreentating Diane Cacciatore; Fred Haddad, representing Ron Cacciatore; and Kenneth Delegal, representing Dawson.



Th attorneys told jurors that PAge and the Cacciatores were so close that the Massachusetts millionaire spent five Christmas holidays with them and that Page had given Ron Cacciatore a legal power of attorney and shared a bank account with him.



Defense lawyers showed that Cacciatore and Dawson didn't hide their relationship during the civil trials. In fact, lawyers representing Page's estate were aware that Dawson had been arrested and was on probation.



Prosecutor J. Brian McCormick tried to salvage the case Tuesday afternoon, telling Judge Gonzalez that Page was a 'tight-fisted' man who never gave away money and, in fact, was scurrying to raise cash shortly before his death for a big Massachusetts business deal.



'It just couldn't have happened during the civil trial,' McCormick said. 'There was a fraud afoot here….George Page would have put a stop to it, had he known it was afoot.'



Gonzalez didn't buy it.



'The government's case herein is wholly circumstantial,' the judge said. 'No reasonable mind could fairly conclude that the defendants are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.'



Gonzalez said criminal cases cannot be made 'on the basis of mere suspicion, but on facts and evidence.' On May 23, before jurors were even seated to hear the case, the judge, referring to the civil trial that marked the heart of the government's case, told lawyers: 'We're not here to re-try that case. That case has been tried.'



As they were leaving the courthouse, two jurors said they agreed with Gonzalez. One, Sonja Johnson, described the government's case as 'poor.'



'I just don't think they have enough evidence to convict these people,' she said.



'I think the system worked- they cleared my name,' Cacciatore said later. 'But they made a big hoopla of all this corruption at BSO and they looked underneath every rock, and the only thing they came up with was this case.'