Feds Fuggedaboudit: Gotti Prosecution Dropped

The U.S. government has decided that, after three attempts to convict former mobster John A. Gotti ended in hung juries on racketeering charges, it will drop the effort to prosecute the son of mob boss John Gotti. "Junior" Gotti has admitted he was a mobster in the past but won sympathy from at least some courtroom observers by renouncing his mob past and his father’s mafia code while maintaining his love for his father.  The government failed to convict Gotti in a racketeering case in which prosecutors alleged he was responsible for the kidnapping of a radio talk show host, Curtis Sliwa, who had publicly criticized his father. "The Government has concluded that a retrial of defendant John A. Gotti on the pending indictment is not in the interests of justice in light of the three prior hung juries in the case," the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael Garcia, said in a statement.  "Accordingly, yesterday we submitted a proposed Order which the Court has signed and which ends this prosecution." The jury in the latest trial unanimously found Gotti responsible for the kidnapping of Sliwa, the founder of the vigilante group The Guardian Angels.  But they failed to convict him on the overall racketeering conspiracy, in which the kidnapping was a count.  In a racketeering case, if the jury fails to reach a verdict on the overall conspiracy, its findings on any individual count are tossed out.    Gotti’s father earned the tabloid nickname "The Teflon Don" after juries acquitted him three times in both state and federal courts, but ultimately he was convicted and died of cancer in a maximum security federal prison.