Gotti’s Team Seeks Some Unexpected Witnesses for Defense

Like many savvy New Yorkers, John “Junior” Gotti is a dedicated Gang Land reader.“What’s in Capeci’s column?” Junior wanted to know when buddies Steven Dobies and Richard Rehbock arrived to visit Gotti on March 14, 2003, the day the FBI began listening to his conversations through a court-authorized bug in the visiting room of the Ray Brook federal prison.Indeed, the Junior Don used Gang Land to stay abreast of other wiseguys and crime family matters during the five years he was serving out his 1999 racketeering conviction at the prison near Lake Placid, N.Y.In that regard, Gotti was no different than other similarly situated inmates around the country, at least those who don’t subscribe to The New York Sun. He remained plugged into the life he left behind by getting information from visitors or letters from family and friends. Sources say he also received a copy of Gang Land each week from an attorney who designated it as “legal mail” that could have an impact on him.Unlike other inmates, however, Gotti plans to use those regular weekly updates in his own defense at his ongoing racketeering trial in Manhattan Federal Court. If necessary, his lawyers informed Gang Land last week, they are prepared to use their subpoena power.Needless to say, Gang Land is disinclined to testify, and dutifully informed the Junior Don’s lawyers that any subpoena to do so would be resisted.The notion of Gang Land testifying as a defense witness for Junior Gotti — or any Gotti, for that matter — is one of several intriguing surprises that makes the third trial stemming from the 1992 kidnap-shooting of ABC radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa seem more and more like a “bizarro-world” episode of “Seinfeld.”Last week, for example, prosecutors Victor Hou and Miriam Rocah opted not to call Mr. Sliwa to testify about the attack 14 years ago, leaving Gotti to subpoena him as a defense witness. This move stemmed from a government decision to focus more attention on alleged Gotti crimes since 1999, when he claims to have quit the mob (a claim that has brought him quasi-success in prior trials), thus making him innocent of racketeering charges due to a five-year statute of limitations.At the same time, however, prosecutors did call a member of the Aryan Brotherhood to testify about jailhouse dealings he had with Gotti’s late father while both were inmates at Marion Federal Penitentiary during the mid-1990s, also several years before Junior claims he withdrew from the mob.At the last trial, prosecutors played an expletive-laced 1996 videotape during which both Gottis badmouthed Gang Land. In the tape, the Dapper Don exclaimed that he wished he were free so he could throw this writer off a building. Things have mellowed since then. Ten years later, the Junior Don wants Gang Land to join Mr. Sliwa as a defense witness.In his last tape-recorded words on the subject of Gang Land — on May 14, 2004 — Junior expressed a somewhat different attitude.“How does Capeci know all this?” he exclaimed during a discussion overheard on the last day the Ray Brook bug was in place.His seemingly newfound appreciation has nothing to do with his legal team’s decision to subpoena Gang Land as a witness, however. Lawyers Charles Carnesi, Seth Ginsberg, and Sarita Kedia would like this writer to introduce into evidence the dates and subject matter of about two-dozen columns that were published during the 14 months the FBI bug was in place at Ray Brook.The lawyers say that his many hours of discussion about turncoat capo Michael “Mikey Scars” DiLeonardo, and the investigation that led to the charge that Junior ordered Mr. Sliwa’s shooting all took place after exclusive Gang Land columns about those matters.So did many other discussions Gotti had with Dobies, Rehbock, and others about numerous wiseguys, including mob defectors Salvatore Vitale, a former Bonanno underboss, as well as onetime Luchese acting bosses Joseph “Little Joe” Defede and Alphonse “Little Al” D’Arco, the lawyers add.This evidence, they say, would demonstrate that, contrary to the government’s contention, Junior’s tape-recorded prison talk is not proof that he was engaged in mob activity while behind bars. It was merely idle chatter, gossip, and a concern that he might be indicted again — all precipitated, they say, by Gang Land.Gang Land has no problem with Gotti using our published columns in his defense.Despite assurances that his lawyers will not seek disclosure of any Gang Land sources of confidential information, though, his lawyers have been informed that any subpoena will be resisted.“Everything the defense wants is in the public record already,” Gang Land’s lawyer, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, a former newspaper colleague at the Daily News, said. “Anything not in the public record is privileged, and cannot be compelled by a defense subpoena or inquired about on cross examination by the government. It’s in everyone’s best interest for the parties to simply stipulate to the information and be done with it.”Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma, who has gotten a trifle wordy since he became a lawyer, added: “There is no way Jerry Capeci can tell us what Junior Gotti was thinking when he read those columns. So there is no justification to breach this very important privilege.”So there.***You can take the wiseguy off the streets, but it seems you can never take the streets out of the wiseguy.Consider this twisted logic offered on the witness stand by Mikey Scars. Nearly four years after he quit the Gambino family, the ex-mobster insists that his former crime family should pay for a $17,000, 4-karat engagement ring that he got for his fiancé, but never paid for, when he was a true blue wiseguy.Under cross-examination this week, Mikey Scars, who was heard on an FBI tape-recording — soon after he began cooperating — telling an associate that he would return the ring if he couldn’t come up with the cash, testified that he was entitled to keep the ring.DiLeonardo, who has been living with the object of his affection for a year now — after serving three years for racketeering charges, including murder — said he was entitled to keep the ring because his former mobster buddies had “robbed” all his money and because the jeweler was a mob associate.When lawyer Carnesi noted that the dough was really money DiLeonardo had stolen from stock market investors before he was arrested and jailed, Mikey Scars — who conceded that he never earned an honest dollar in his life — protested vehemently.“No. No. It was my money,” he insisted. “When they robbed over there, it becomes my money, and the family’s money. He was an associate of the Gambino family. … Those are the guys that took the money in the street, he should go to them and get it. They robbed me. They owe him.”This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at ganglandnews.com.

Gotti’s Team Seeks Some Unexpected Witnesses for Defense

Gotti’s Team Seeks Some Unexpected Witnesses for Defense

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