Mr. Rhode Island: A Harrowing Courtroom Thriller!

It was an average September day. Stephen Rosati, a young businessman, was working with his dad at their real estate company in Rhode Island when a half-dozen policemen entered and arrested him for murdering Joe Viscido, Jr., a drug dealer in Florida, four years earlier. Peter Dallas, had admitted to the crime and said he did it with Stephen. Stephen claimed he never heard of the dead man, didn’t know the witnesses, didn’t know his supposed accomplice and, on top of that, was 1500 miles away when the crime went down! Like something out of Kafka, Stephen Rosati found himself imprisoned in a non-bailable offense, and thus began the longest extradition hearing in US history. Many of the characters are well-known. In Rhode Island there was Jack Cicilline, mob lawyer who had been called, by Alan Dershowitz, “one of the keenest legal minds in New England,” the prosecutor, Assistant AG Randy White, brother of a TV 10 news anchor, Sheldon Whitehouse, later-day US senator, who would make a decision that would help send Rosati to the gallows, and the judge, John F. Sheehan, nationally famous for helping defend socialite Claus von Bulow, accused of trying to kill his wife. And in Florida, there was Governor Chiles, who appointed an independent prosecutor to figure out who the real killers were, Assistant AG Chuck Morton, who had been on 48 Hours and the real hero, Special Agent Michael Breece, who discovered the truth to this complex case. The author is handwriting expert, Dr. Marc Seifer, whose book The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla, often tracks as the #1 book in its subcategory. Featured in The New York Times, Wizard has been called “revelatory” by Publisher’s Weekly and a “masterpiece” by Nelson DeMille. With direct access to the 1,500-page police log used to put the case together, 1,400-page court transcripts, 200 newspaper articles, depositions and interviews, Mr. Rhode Island is a must read.

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