Aug 14, 2006 9:16 am US/Eastern
'Junior' Gotti Back For Third Racketeering Trial
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
When John "Junior" Gotti returns to a Manhattan courtroom Monday, it marks the start of his third trial in a year for allegedly ordering a beating of Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa that nearly ended in the radio talk show host's death.
Gotti will sit in U.S. District Court as jury selection begins in his latest legal foray, with opening statements expected to begin a week later. Prosecutors will again portray Gotti as the successor to his father, the flamboyant late Gambino boss John Gotti, also known as the Dapper Don.
Central to the case are the 1992 baseball beating of Sliwa and a second attack where Sliwa was shot three times and nearly killed, allegedly in retribution for his on-air rants against Gotti's father. The elder Gotti was convicted of racketeering that same year, and died in prison a decade later.
Trials last summer and this spring ended in deadlocks, with jurors unable to decide whether Gotti can be convicted of crimes such as extortion, loan sharking and witness tampering as well as the brief kidnapping of Sliwa in a stolen cab.
Since the last trial, prosecutors have added new racketeering charges and the witness tampering count, claiming they can prove Gotti continued to commit crimes after he allegedly quit the mob following a 1999 guilty plea to racketeering.
The charges are key to countering a largely successful defense strategy of telling jurors that Gotti left the mob in the 1990s and can no longer be held accountable for what he did then or what the Gambino family does now.
In the first two trials, the developments outside the courtroom often overshadowed the courtroom drama.
There were reports that Gotti had considered a plea agreement that would have called for a sentence much smaller than the 30 years he could otherwise face if convicted. There were reports that his father had a love child before he went to prison.
And there was the revelation that Gotti's wife was pregnant with their sixth child, with an imminent due date. A published report said a boy was born to the couple on Saturday, but a call to defense attorney Charles Carnesi from The Associated Press on Sunday seeking confirmation was not returned. In addition, witnesses at the last trial included Gotti's brother, Peter, who admitted that his father was the former head of the Gambino crime family.
The latest trial even produced an on-air rift briefly between Sliwa and his radio co-host, Ron Kuby, a civil rights lawyer who provides a counterweight to Sliwa's conservative views.
The defense called Kuby as a witness to testify; that Gotti told him in 1998 he wanted out of organized crime. Sliwa blamed Kuby's testimony for causing jurors to doubt the government's case, and said he was so angry that he threatened to end his radio show. But the show, like the trial and the case, has gone on.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
