Three young Chicago hoodlums feel the sting of justice, handed down by their own, while standing in court before a Cook County judge in 1936.
As Judge Braude looked on, future “Outfit” soldier Fiore (Fifi) Buccieri gave his brother, Frank (The Horse) Buccieri, who also became an Outfit soldier, five lashings with a doubled-up, five-foot length of rubber hose.
Frank and his two accomplices, Joseph Rossi and Geno Antonelli, were going to be charged with robbery for stealing $10 from a Pennsylvania man and could have faced three months in jail, but Fifi and the brother of one of the other defendants suggested a lashing instead. The judge went along with the suggestion, and after it was over, reduced the charge from robbery to petty larceny.
The judge’s decision didn’t go over well with the Chicago Bar Association’s Committee for the Defense of Prisoners, who called it “cruel and inhumane.” Judge Braude shifted the blame off himself saying that he didn’t make the suggestion and only allowed the brothers to use his courtroom for the whipping. However, he added that he thought the punishment was a “good” form of “social” therapy.
