No death penalty for two in N.Y. mob case

NEW YORK, March 17 (UPI) -- Federal prosecutors have said they won't seek the death penalty for two men accused of a 1989 mob killing in New York.

John "Jackie Nose" D'Amico, 73, and Joseph "Joe the German" Watts, 67, appeared in court Tuesday in Manhattan, the New York Post reported. They were indicted last month by a federal grand jury on charges involving the killing of Fred Weiss, a former city editor at the Staten Island Advance who had gone into the sanitation business.

The late Gambino boss John Gotti, known as the "Dapper Don," allegedly ordered the killing because he believed, wrongly, that Weiss had become a government informant. Prosecutors say that he asked the DeCavalcante Family, the only New Jersey-based Mafia organization, to carry out the hit.