These days, John “Junior” Gotti is grappling with a dilemma, one his old man never had to think twice about: Should he take the stand in his own defense?

Gotti is getting ready for his third trial on racketeering charges, including the allegation that he ordered the 1992 shooting of an ABC radio talk show host, Curtis Sliwa.

In the coming weeks, the Junior Don must decide whether recent disclosures that he had a secret “proffer session” with the feds 19 months ago — usually a precursor to becoming a turncoat — frees him to do what his heart desired at his first trial: to testify as a witness for himse lf.

Now that his “secret” is out, there’s certainly much less holding him back than there was a year ago, when he told his trial judge: “I am going to follow my head and not my heart. I’m going to opt out of taking the witness stand.”

Last month, following Gang Land’s disclosure that Gotti during a “sitdown” with the feds had admitted committing crimes with mob associates, Junior confirmed meeting with the feds, but insisted that his intention was to convince the feds that he had quit the mob, not to become a stool pigeon.

As soon as he realized his efforts were naïve and misguided, he left the session, Gotti told the Daily News.

“I’m a man. I’ll take my medicine” for my crimes, he said, adding that he would never help prosecutors send former cohorts to prison for lengthy stretches.

“I wasn’t going to make widows or orphans” by cooperating, he said. If fact, he said he had angered his father merely by telling him during a videotaped jailhouse visit that he was seeking closure for himself and his family by planning to take a plea bargain and go to prison in 1999, when he claims to have definitively withdrawn from the mob. He was not going to tarnish him further and become a “rat,” he told the News.

Now that Junior has publicly admitted meeting with the government, and everyone knows he did not cooperate — no matter what the specific discussions entailed — the out-of-court grief he would seem to face from his mob peers are humiliation and isolation, not retribution.

Taking the witness stand in his own defense would certainly be risky, especially for a defendant who has taken an oath of allegiance to a Mafia family. But because of changes in the prosecution theory this time, Junior would have some compelling FBI-inspired evidence backing his testimony that he quit the mob: his own words that the FBI secretly tape-recorded while he was under investigation.

Since the racketeering indictment was filed on the eve of his release from prison in 2004, the case has changed dramatically — seemingly in Gotti’s favor.

Early on, the soap opera-like proceedings played out in court and on the airwaves as a no-holds-barred battle between the mob prince and Mr. Sliwa. The outspoken radio personality criticized Gotti and his family every chance he got; Junior tried to get a gag order against his nonstop antagonist.

But the mob scion’s trial strategy — Junior was innocent of racketeering conspiracy, his lawyers said, because he withdrew from the mob more than five years before the indictment was filed — changed the focal point of the case to the statute of limitations.

His two mistrials (especially the second, when jurors hung 8-4 for acquittal) greatly reduced the impact of the Sliwa shooting, making it seem less important. Not in Mr. Sliwa’s eyes, of course, but as it pertains to Gotti’s guilt or innocence.

After the second hung jury, the feds sensed that Gotti had gained tremendous momentum between the two trials — he had only a single holdout juror the first time — and prosecutors Victor Hou and Miriam Rocah threw all caution to the wind.

“They obviously felt their ship was sinking and in desperate need of a quick overhaul,” a mob lawyer not connected with the case, but who has followed it closely, said. (Since Gotti’s remarks last month, Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin issued a gag order against all current and former participants in the case.)

The prosecutors redrafted the indictment to include charges of mob activity up to this year, and specifically alleged that he took part in Gambino family business while incarcerated between 1999 and 2004. That strategy would enable Gotti’s lawyers to play many jailhouse talks that took place in 2003 and 2004 that seem to back up their client’s contention that he withdrew from the mob, but they did it anyway.

At the first two trials, Judge Scheindlin ruled that all the tape-recordings contained conversations that were not relevant because they occurred after 2002, when Junior was linked to loan-sharking and weapons possession.

On the first day the FBI bug was in place, March 14, 2003, Gotti said: “I don’t want to hear about it anymore. I told these guys over and over again, ‘Don’t come see me and then a week later be sitting by Ozone Park. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to see you again. Don’t bring any messages from anybody. I don’t want to know. I don’t care. I’m not interested.’ … If I’m fortunate to walk out of here when they open the gates … I’m taking my sons, my daughters, I’m going away. That’s it. I’m done. I don’t want to be bothered anymore.”

In this trial, defense lawyers Charles Carnesi, Seth Ginsberg, and Sarita Kedia say the recordings are relevant because they show Gotti’s “state of mind” at the time that he’s accused of committing crimes, and the jury should be able to hear them.

Mr. Hou and Ms. Rocah have already conceded that point, but argue that some of his words aren’t, and have asked Scheindlin to keep those out.

They also intend to play many tapes that aren’t favorable for Junior. There are numerous discussions, for example, in which he is heard telling visitors that he instructed his then-lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman — who would later counsel Gotti to attend a January 2005 “proffer session” with the feds — to work out a plea deal that would include the Sliwa shooting charge.

In court papers, Gotti’s attorneys have asked Scheindlin to exclude those tapes on grounds that they are highly prejudicial and protected legal discussions. In the alternative, the lawyers have asked to introduce other conversations that better explain Gotti’s “state of mind” at the time.

As far as Gotti’s state of mind is concerned — then, now, in 1999, and in 1992, when he was an acting boss and Sliwa was shot — the Junior Don would seem to be the best person to spell that out, for better or worse.

A year ago, as Gotti was anguishing over that issue, Gang Land heard Mr. Carnesi, who represented a co-defendant at the time, telling Lewis Kasman, a longtime supporter of Gotti and his late father, outside the courtroom, that he did “not think taking the stand is a bad idea.”

Next month, Gotti and Mr. Carnesi will have to determine whether it’s a good idea.

This column and other news of organized crime will be available later today at ganglandnews.com.