Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

A third mistrial for Gotti

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 28, 2006

NEW YORK - A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the mob case against John A. "Junior" Gotti - the third time in a year a jury deadlocked on his claim he quit the family business. "It's enough now. They got to let go," Gotti told reporters. "If they let us alone, I'll leave. I'll take my family and I'll go."

Prosecutors did not immediately ask for a fourth trial for the 42-year-old Gotti, who has become a fixture in federal court in the past year as the government tried three times to prove he has followed in father John Gotti's footsteps.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin declared the mistrial, and told jurors it was "not your failure."

Three jurors who spoke to reporters said the jury agreed Gotti was responsible for two 1992 attacks on Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. The finding was not enough to convict him of racketeering because the jury could not agree on whether Gotti had quit the Gambino family by July 1999. If he did quit the Mafia by that date, the statute of limitations for prosecuting him would have expired.

[Last modified September 28, 2006, 00:57:34]