Trial pits 'Angel' against son of 'Dapper Don' Gotti

[mysteriew]

For years, radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa routinely denigrated late mob boss John Gotti and his cohorts as murderers, drug dealers, degenerates. His tone was so strident, prosecutors say, that Gotti's son ordered an attack on the motormouthed founder of the Guardian Angels.

Make it personal, the younger Gotti allegedly told his gunsels.

Thirteen years after Sliwa took two bullets in a botched hit, he will finally get face-to-face with John "Junior" Gotti in a courtroom. Sliwa, who's rarely at a loss for words, was expected to testify Monday in Gotti's federal racketeering trial.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/08/21/gotti.ap/index.html

[mysteriew]

A radio host known for mouthing off against the Mafia testified Monday about how a 1992 cab ride became a botched and bloody kidnapping that prosecutors say was ordered by John A. "Junior" Gotti.

Taking the witness stand at Gotti's conspiracy trial in federal court in Manhattan, Curtis Sliwa told jurors that after hailing the cab, a masked gunman hiding in the front passenger seat "popped up like a jack-in-the-box," swore at him and began shooting.

During cross examination, Gotti's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, sought to portray Sliwa as a con man who repeatedly lied to police and the media in the 1970s and 1980s to promote his Guardian Angels crime-fighting group. The witness conceded that he once concocted a story about personally fighting off a would-be rapist he described as a "6-foot-6 gorilla."

Sliwa also admitted that he made headlines by falsely claiming that police, annoyed by the Guardian Angels, had kidnapped and threatened him.

"I did a very stupid thing," he said of the episode.
http://www.wnbc.com/news/4876809/detail.html

[mysteriew]

A federal jury deliberating the case of John A. "Junior" Gotti indicated Monday that it was deadlocked on a racketeering charge against the son of the late mob boss.

Jurors, at the urging of the judge, were to resume deliberating Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan.

In a note to U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin on the seventh day of deliberations, jurors asked what they should do if they were deadlocked over the question of Gotti's so-called withdrawal defense.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1140884

[mysteriew]

The judge in the John A. "Junior" Gotti racketeering case declared a mistrial on the most serious charges Tuesday and said she was likely to grant bail to the jailed scion of the Gambino organized crime family.

After eight days of deliberations, jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked on all but one count. They acquitted Gotti, 41, of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. That verdict will stand if there is a retrial.

http://www.courttv.com/trials/news/092005_gottimistrial_ap.html