BOSTON, April 18, 2013—A twice-convicted double-murderer will not get a third trial for the 1986 slayings of two men in Boston’s North End, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said today.

In a sharply-worded, 28-page decision filed yesterday, Chief Justice for Administration and Management Robert Mulligan denied a motion for new trial filed by LOUIS COSTA, convicted with FRANK DiBENEDETTO in 1988 and again in 1994 of two counts of first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of Frank Chiuchiolo and Joseph Bottari. Mulligan last year denied a similar motion filed by DiBenedetto; his decision on Costa’s motion essentially closes the case for good.

Conley, whose office fought against the motions, hailed the decision by Mulligan, who presided over the second trial and said in yesterday’s decision that Costa’s motion relied “upon naught but gossamer inferences and speculation.”

“The evidence against these defendants is as strong today as it was in 1986,” Conley said. “No amount of sophistry can detract from the clear and compelling evidence of both defendants’ guilt. The first jury got it right in 1988, the second jury got it right in 1994, and Judge Mulligan got it right in this decision.”

After the Supreme Judicial Court overturned Costa’s and DiBenedetto’s 1988 convictions in the Feb. 19, 1986, murders, Mulligan presided over the second trial as a Superior Court judge in 1994 and had previously denied the motion before the SJC remanded it back to him for further findings on additional evidence.

Specifically, Costa claimed that testing in 2004 of “very small amounts of human DNA” found by a serologist on sneakers DiBenedetto was wearing at the time of his arrest several days after the murders did not match the genetic profiles of either murder victim. From that testing – and notwithstanding the abundant eyewitness testimony identifying them as taking part in the grisly fatal shootings – the two claimed to have “new evidence” of their innocence.

Mulligan found otherwise and denied their 2005 motion for a new trial in 2009. The defendants appealed that denial to the Supreme Judicial Court, which in 2011 remanded the case back to him for further findings.

“Even assuming the reliability of the forensic serologist’s determination that neither victim’s DNA was found in the specific areas of the sneakers which she sampled, that limited factual predicate seemed plainly overstretched to support the defendant’s argument that DiBenedetto was not one of the shooters,” Mulligan wrote. “Furthermore, the DNA evidence at best had a collateral effect as to the defendant, given that he was separately identified by eyewitnesses as one of the shooters …. [T]he new DNA evidence had at most nominal exculpatory value that was overwhelmed by the strength of the Commonwealth’s case.”

Mulligan described at length and in detail the eyewitness testimony that positively implicated DiBenedetto and Costa, coming as it did from two separate and independent sources: one of them a person known to DiBenedetto and the other a neighborhood resident who watched the crimes unfold from his third-floor apartment overlooking Slye Park, now known as Copp’s Hill Park.

“I had the opportunity at trial to observe [that second eyewitness] firsthand,” Mulligan wrote. “He seemed fair and impartial, honest, and forthright. The substance of his testimony, and his overall credibility, did not diminish on cross-examination, despite considerable efforts by defense counsel … I credited the substance of [his] testimony at the time of trial and similarly credit it now upon review of the trial record.”

Citing a 1986 SJC decision, Mulligan laid out the requirement for a new trial based on newly-discovered evidence.

“The defendant bears the burden of proving that the evidence alleged to be newly discovered ‘casts real doubt on the justice of the conviction,’” he wrote. “The defendant here, relying upon naught but gossamer inferences and speculation, has failed to meet that burden.”

Massachusetts and federal appellate procedures recommend that post-conviction motions be heard by the trial judge when possible. In 2012, an attorney from the firm representing Costa asked Mulligan to recuse himself from the new trial motions in light of interactions the judge and attorney had during unrelated proceedings. DiBenedetto’s counsel joined in that motion; prosecutors opposed it and recommended that Mulligan sever Costa’s case from that of DiBenedetto. Mulligan did so, denied DiBenedetto’s motion, and ultimately declined to recuse himself from Costa’s motion.

Assistant District Attorney Jack Zanini, chief of the DA’s Appellate Division, argued against the motion with Assistant District Attorney Kris Foster. Costa was represented by attorneys David Apfel and, more recently, Paul Ware.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.