Teflon ‘Junior’ Gotti avoids 5th racketeering trial as NY prosecutors decide to drop case

Teflon Jr. Gotti avoids 5th NY racketeering trial

NEW YORK — John “Junior” Gotti seemingly has his father’s knack for avoiding conviction.

Federal prosecutors have decided not to seek a fifth racketeering trial against the 45-year-old Gotti, the son of one of the most notorious mobsters in the United States, the Teflon Don, John Gotti.

While the Gambino family crime boss eventually was convicted of racketeering, the younger Gotti, who insists he left organized crime a decade ago, avoided conviction in four trials. There won’t be a fifth.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara issued a one-paragraph statement Wednesday saying prosecutors had decided not to seek another trial “in light of the circumstances.” Judge Kevin Castel signed an order approving the request to drop the case.

One of Gotti’s lawyers, Seth Ginsberg, called the move to drop the case the “right decision” and added, “I hope that they stick to it this time and let John and his family be at peace.”

Gotti has been free on $2 million bail since a jury deadlocked on Dec. 1 after deliberating for 11 days, forcing a mistrial. He spent the holidays at home on Long Island with his family.

Three trials in 2005 and 2006 also ended in hung juries. Those prosecutions began as Gotti was completing a five-year sentence he received after pleading guilty in 1999 to federal charges over the objections of his father.

The repeated hung juries left some comparing Gotti to his late father, who escaped conviction in a series of trials in the 1980s and early 1990s, gaining him the nickname Teflon Don because the charges wouldn’t stick to him. Also known as the Dapper Don for his stylish suits, Gotti was, for several years, the most notorious mobster in the United States.

The elder Gotti was finally convicted of racketeering in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison. He died in prison in 2002.

The younger Gotti was accused of ordering a kidnapping and attempted murder plot against Curtis Sliwa, founder of an anti-crime group called the Guardian Angels who had criticized the elder Gotti on his radio talk show. Sliwa was first beaten with a baseball bat in 1992 and was later kidnapped, shot and nearly killed.

Federal prosecutors in Tampa, Fla., brought the latest Gotti case in 2008, but it was returned to Manhattan by a judge who said he was left with the “unmistakable and disquieting impression” that the government had shopped for a trial location where it might finally win.

Prosecutors for the first time also attempted to tie Gotti to multiple murders besides the claims about Sliwa.

Gotti’s latest trial was punctuated by outbursts by his mother and once by him, when he shouted to the star prosecution witness, John Alite: “You’re a punk! You’re a dog! You’re a dog! You always were a dog your whole life, you punk dog.”

Gotti’s mother, Victoria Gotti, screamed out to her son once when the jury was not in the room: “They’re railroading you! They’re doing to you what they did to your father!”