Convicted mob boss Vincent “Chin” Gigante lost his final legal fight yesterday when the Supreme Court shot down an appeal of his racketeering conviction.
“This pretty much closes the book” on Gigante’s long battle with the law, said his lawyer, Michael Marinaccio.
The justices issued their decision without comment.
Gigante, 71, earned the nickname “Oddfather” for his bizarre public behavior, such as wandering around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe, mumbling to himself.
His lawyers had long fought to keep him out of court and prison, saying he was a demented old man incapable of aiding his defense team.
Prosecutors accused “Chin,” a former boxer, of faking craziness to duck justice, and in 1997, he was convicted of racketeering as boss of the Genovese crime family, the nation’s largest Mafia clan.
Marinaccio had sought to overturn the verdict by arguing that the late mob turncoat Pete Savino, a key prosecution witness, should not have been allowed to testify by closed-circuit television from a hospital bed.
Gigante is serving a 12-year-sentence in a federal lockup in Fort Worth, Texas.