St. Laurent

PROVIDENCE — A lawyer for mobster Anthony M. “The Saint” St. Laurent Sr. is asking a federal court to dismiss an attempted murder-for-hire charge against St. Laurent, claiming a 2006 plea agreement on an extortion charge bars the new prosecution.

St. Laurent, already serving a five-year sentence in the extortion case, was indicted in April on charges he tried to hire someone to kill Patriarca crime family member Robert P. DeLuca in 2006. Some of the evidence that led to the murder solicitation indictment was developed during the extortion investigation in 2006. St. Laurent’s lawyer Victor J. Beretta claims, in a motion filed Wednesday, that the 2006 plea agreement in the extortion case covered the attempted murder-for-hire charge as well.

Federal officials, predictably, disagreed.

“The government will oppose the motion,” said Thomas Connell, spokesman for acting U.S. Attorney Luis Matos. He declined to describe the government’s objections, saying they would be detailed later in the government’s court filing.

Beretta’s motion argues that in April 2006, while St. Laurent was discussing the extortion plot with a cooperating witness and in conversations that were taped, he inquired about hiring someone to kill DeLuca. The motion states he was arrested on April 13, 2006, in part to head off any possible murder solicitation indictment and evidence in the murder solicitation was included in hearings on the extortion case.

St. Laurent knew in 2006 that he faced a possible indictment for trying to hire someone to kill DeLuca, Beretta argued in his motion, and said St. Laurent entered into the 2006 plea negotiations with the goal of avoiding prosecution on that charge. He wound up pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit extortion and was sentenced to five years.

“The agreement covered the same time, place and participants as the conspiracy that was charged,” the motion said.

Besides the plea deal in which the federal government agreed “not to charge the defendant with any offenses known to the government related to the conspiracy charge to which the defendant is pleading,” Beretta cited another part of the 2006 agreement that warned St. Laurent that he still faced possible state prosecution on the solicitation-of-murder charge.

If there was a possibility of a federal indictment on the solicitation charge, a provision allowing for a state prosecution would be pointless, Beretta said.

jhill@projo.com