Gotti prosecutor present collusion testimony
October 22, 2009 by The Boss · Leave a Comment
Prosecutors in John “Junior” Gotti’s racketeering trial will be allowed to present testimony Wednesday that Gotti and Bonanno family boss Vincent Basciano colluded in 2004 to construct legal defenses that they had withdrawn from the mob.
U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Castel ruled late Tuesday that he will allow two informants – Gambino family soldier Joseph D’Angelo and Bonanno family capo Dominick Cicale – to testify that Gotti and Basciano told them they had consulted on the plan.
“We need to come up with a new way of defending,” prosecutor Elie Honig quoted Gotti as telling D’Angelo in a jailhouse conversation after he and Gotti were indicted in a racketeering conspiracy in 2004.
Both informants, Honig said, will testify that they were assured that admitting the mob’s existence had been cleared, and that by denying they had engaged in crime for five years they would fall outside the statute of limitations on racketeering.
“Don’t worry about it,” Honig said Basciano told Cicale. “I’ve discussed it with John Gotti Junior, and Junior’s going to have Joey D’Angelo do the same type of thing.”
Gotti, 45, of Oyster Bay, the son of the late Gambino family boss John J. Gotti, used the withdrawal defense in three racketeering trials in 2005 and 2006, which ended in hung juries, but the testimony from D’Angelo and Cicale was not presented in those cases. Gotti lawyer Charles Carnesi denies that the conversations with D’Angelo and Basciano ever occurred.
Castel’s ruling, not unexpected, came after a day in which prosecutors played a series of 2003 prison tapes in which Gotti rants about his disgust with the treachery of gang life as a lawyer describes the need to “plant the seeds” for the legal claim that he has withdrawn from organized crime.
“Richie, any opportunity you’re given, any opportunity you’re given to be heard – ‘He’s looking to move away when he gets out of jail,’ that’s the bottom line,” Gotti tells Gambino family lawyer Richard Rehbock on a tape recorded on March 14, 2003, at a prison in Raybrook.
“Then other people have to be dropping the seed on the wiretaps,” Rehbock answers Gotti. “People have to plant the seed on the wiretaps. That’s what they have to do.”
The tapes were played at each of Gotti’s last three trials. Prisoners know meetings are recorded unless they request a private legal session. Prosecutors say Gotti was feigning alienation from the mob for legal purposes, while his lawyers say openness about quitting is a necessary element of a real withdrawal.
Whether it is genuine or acting, Gotti is vociferous on some of the tapes about his feeling that he was betrayed by associates and family members after being imprisoned in 1999.
“Money that was mine they stole,” he tells his sister Angel on an August 2003 tape. “Nothing but treachery and deceit, that’s all that’s here.”"They’re predators. They prey on their own,” he tells three friends in a September 2003 tape. ” I’m not a part of it and I’m glad, I’m proud I’m not a part of it.”
Source: newsday
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