As John “Junior” Gotti enters the home stretch of his third racketeering trial in Manhattan, another college-educated mob prince who reputedly took over his father’s crime family is about to begin his murder and racketeering trial in Brooklyn.

While the Junior Don, whose jury hung 8-4 for acquittal in his second trial, has both momentum and a cohesive strategy in place as he nears the finish line, the Colombo family’s acting boss, Alphonse Persico, seems to be stuck in the starting gate.

On the eve of his trial, Persico, who at 52 is 10 years older than Gotti, is unsure about the makeup of his legal team, let alone his defense strategy.

Last week, after his efforts to serve as “pro-se” co-counsel with his lawyers were shot down by the trial judge, Persico beefed up his legal team by retaining another attorney, whose prior connection to a witness against Persico is the subject of a disqualification proceeding set for tomorrow.

Things are so bad that Persico, who has six years remaining on an earlier racketeering conviction, wants to stay at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn during jury selection, which begins Tuesday.

Persico, who faces life behind bars if found guilty of the 1999 murder of then-underboss William “Wild Bill” Cutolo, says he’d rather use the time to pore through records that prosecutors are due to turn over to the defense tomorrow.

In an articulate, hand-written four-page letter to Judge Sterling Johnson, Persico says his time would be better spent reviewing material about eight mob turncoats and 27 other government witnesses, stating that he would waive, “orally before the court and in writing,” his right to attend the process.

Recalling that Judge Johnson previously “expressed confidence in the ability of my defense team,” Persico stressed that he was not showing “disrespect for the court or disregard for the process,” but making his request out of a “simple concern that I will not have the proper time, and physical and emotional calm to adequately review this material.”

Depending on the length of the trial day, Persico wrote, travel to and from the lockup in Sunset Park and the stay at the courthouse in Brooklyn Heights could take 14 hours, beginning at 6 a.m. and ending at 8 p.m.

In his letter, Persico noted that he “agrees” with the judge’s favorable opinion about the abilities of his current lawyers, Dale Smith and Sarita Kedia. “So,” he wrote, “I am sure my absence from jury selection will not harm me, my co-defendants, or the process.”

Maybe not, but prosecutors Katya Jestin, Thomas Seigel, and Deborah Mayer want Persico there every minute of the tedious process that usually accompanies the selection of an anonymous jury for a six- to eight-week trial.

Noting that Persico spent a year seeking to take back a 2001 guilty plea for which he later received 13 years, the feds argue that his motion is little more than a ploy to give him an appeal issue if he were convicted. His absence could also extend the process if a juror issue arose that his lawyers could not decide without conferring with him, they wrote.

But the prosecutors’ arguments regarding Persico’s efforts to duck jury selection were mild compared to what lead prosecutor Seigel wrote about the gangster’s hiring of lawyer Vincent Romano.

Mr. Seigel, a veteran assistant U.S. attorney who recently began serving as acting chief of the organized crime unit, said the move smacked of unethical conduct by both men.

Mr. Romano coached a witness to lie to a grand jury and by hooking up with Persico was selling out the interests of several former clients — including one whom Persico allegedly attempted to murder, turncoat mobster Joseph “Joe Campy” Campanella — to a gangster with “limitless financial resources,” Mr. Seigel wrote.

“Romano cannot reveal client confidences or records to the highest bidder,” Mr. Seigel wrote, charging that Persico hired the attorney “for one reason: to gain access to Romano’s knowledge of key government witness Campanella and any information relating to Campanella’s illegal activity.”

In a vitriolic reply brief, the lawyer categorically denied Mr. Seigel’s charges and accused the prosecutor of “a reckless disregard for the truth” in a “venomous personal attack” that was a blatantly obvious “tactic to intimidate me and force my withdrawal.”

Through electronic surveillance, interviews with cooperating witnesses, and other evidence, Mr. Romano wrote, “Seigel is fully and completely aware” that someone else had “threatened and coached the witness to lie in the grand jury.”

In addition, Mr. Romano wrote, he never represented Campanella, only a medical supply company he ran, and his sole function was to litigate and retrieve documents the FBI had seized and return them to Joe Campy, without keeping any copies for his own files.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the East River, federal prosecutors have stated they will soon rest their revamped case against Junior Gotti without calling Curtis Sliwa, the ABC radio talk show host whose 1992 kidnap shooting is the heart of their case.

But while the feds — who focused their third effort on Gotti’s claim that he quit the mob in 1999 — may not want the outspoken Sliwa, the Junior Don plans to use him on the defense team along with his morning talk show co-host, Ron Kuby.

Calling a shooting victim as a defense witness can have an obvious psychological appeal to a jury. Lawyers for the late Dapper Don successfully used that tactic in his 1990 trial to win an acquittal of assault charges in the shooting of union boss John O’Connor.

In addition, attorney Charles Carnesi will use Mr. Sliwa’s testimony to stress the numerous differences between his dramatic account and that of key prosecution witness, Joseph “Little Joe” D’Angelo. As he did last time, Mr. Carnesi will argue that Little Joe had nothing to do with the shooting, but put himself into it to avoid prosecution for two murders he did commit, and admits.

Mr. Carnesi will ask the self-appointed peacekeeper about the many tall tales that Mr. Sliwa told about his own heroics when he was forming the Guardian Angels. The lawyer will also point out that not only was Mr. Sliwa unable to identify his assailants, he wrongly picked out two Gotti pals as his attackers some time after the shooting.

The defense attorney also has an added incentive. As jurors were being selected for this trial, Mr. Sliwa mocked Mr. Carnesi’s physical appearance on his radio show — he is heavy, obviously overweight — and, worse, he disparaged his ethics during a commercial for a weight-loss advertiser soon after the trial judge dismissed several charges in the case.

As Junior and Mr. Carnesi sat in Oyster Bay eating cannolis “toasting another legal victory,” Mr. Sliwa said, “Carnesi says to John Gotti Junior, ‘Hey, gotta lose that weight, gotta look good before the jury.’ And Gotti looks to Carnesi and says, ‘You, YOU’RE fat!’ And Carnesi says to John Gotti Junior, ‘I can be fat because I’m gonna get more people to perjure themselves to keep you out of jail.'”

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