Even though he rattled off the sentences so rapidly that he sounded like a tobacco auctioneer, Presiding Judge Alfonso Giordano needed one hour and 40 minutes to reach the end of the list. When he finally finished, 338 members of the Mafia were sent to jail for crimes ranging from murder to drug trafficking. The remaining 114 on trial were acquitted by the eight-member court that met in a heavily guarded Palermo courtroom crowded with specially built cages to hold the 452 defendants. Thus ended, nearly two years after it had begun, the biggest Mafia trial in Italian history. Said Palermo...
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