Harry Aleman

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Harry "The Hook" Aleman (b. January 19, 1939/1940) was an enforcer for the Chicago Outfit involved in the syndicate's loanshark operations and a suspect in the unsolved murder of Sam Giancana. He also has the dubious distinction of being the only person in the United States who has ever been retried for a crime by the same government after being acquitted of that crime.

Although a leading enforcer for the Chicago Outfit during the 1970s, Aleman's success in the organization would rise only after his marriage to the niece of Chicago mobster Joseph Ferriola. Suspected of at least five previous murders, Aleman was a main suspect in the murder of Chicago Outfit leader Sam Giancana shortly after his murder in 1975. However, with little evidence, authorities were unable to charge him.

It is thought his acquittal for the 1972 murder of Chicago Teamsters Union steward William Logan was due to death threats sent by syndicate members to investigators, prosecutors, witnesses, and the judge.

Appearing before Circuit Court Judge Frank J. Wilson (not the same person as the man with the same name who was once head of the U.S. Secret Service), evidence against Aleman during the two day bench trial included an eyewitness, Robert Lowe, who testified he saw Aleman gun down Logan on September 27, 1972, after Logan refused to provide Aleman shipping information so that the syndicate could hijack Teamster trucks. Aleman was acquitted, and afterward Lowe entered into the Witness Protection Program and, given a new identity, was moved out of Chicago.

A year later, Aleman was charged and later convicted under the RICO Act of organizing a number of home invasions. Sentenced to thirty years imprisonment, Aleman was transferred to a series of correctional facilities in Marion, Illinois, Atlanta, Georgia, Oxford, Wisconsin, and Milan, Michigan serving eleven years until being paroled on April 28, 1989. Agreeing to certain terms providing for his early release, Aleman began work earning $8 an hour as a personnel supervisor with Accurate Coring Company, a South Side warehouse owned by son-in-law Ted Strong, in Chicago.

In 1991, Aleman was charged with extortion from Chicago bookkeepers Vince Rizza and Anthony Reitinger (of which he was connected to Reitinger's murder in 1975). Refusing to testify against syndicate leader Ernest Rocco Infelise in exchange for a plea bargain, Aleman pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.

After attorney Robert Cooley became a government informant, it was later revealed he had delivered a $10,000 bribe to Judge Wilson in exchange for Aleman's acquittal. He also linked Aleman to a number of gangland slayings with former partner "Butch" Petrocelli, including former chief investigator Dick Cain and ex-police officer Chris Cardi. Judge Wilson subsequently committed suicide with a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Partly as a result of Operation GamBat, Aleman was reindicted for the murder of Logan while in prison and eventually retried in September 1997. In 1998, a federal court ruled (Harry Aleman v. Judges of the Criminal Division, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, et al., 138 F.3d 302 (7th Cir. 1998)) that an acquittal by a bribed judge in a bench trial is invalid because the defendant in such a case was never in jeopardy in the first place, and that the legal concept of double jeopardy is therefore inapplicable. This meant Aleman could be retried, and thus he became the first person in U.S. history to be retried by the same government for a crime which he had previously been acquitted. Aleman was convicted at his retrial.