Junior Gotti Offers to Testify

Friends of ours: "Junior" Gotti, John Gotti

John "Junior" Gotti, according to his attorneys, is willing to do the unthinkable: Take the witness stand and testify about his life in the Mafia.

In a letter filed in federal court on Tuesday, Gotti's lawyers said the reputed scion of the Gambino crime family is anxious to tell a jury about how he abandoned mob life after his last prison stint and has "no allegiance to it."

He has only one condition: He doesn't want prosecutors asking him "immaterial" questions about his affairs, the letter said.

Just what topics does Gotti want off limits?

For starters, according to the letter, he doesn't want to be asked whether he laundered money, ran a loan sharking business, tampered with witnesses, extorted people in the construction industry or conspired to kidnap Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.

"Those questions would serve no purpose other than to confuse the issues and to harass, annoy and humiliate Mr. Gotti," his attorney Sarit Kedia wrote in the letter to U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin.

There also is another concern: While Gotti is prepared to testify about his own actions, Kedia wrote, he is unwilling to testify about "certain facts" that "might implicate other people in crimes."

"In other words, Mr. Gotti is indisposed to becoming a de facto cooperator," she wrote.

In other words, don't hold your breath for Gotti's testimony anytime soon.

Prosecutors didn't immediately respond to the motion, and it would be an extraordinary departure from accepted practice if they agreed to limit what they might ask Gotti on the stand.

Jurors have twice deadlocked on whether Gotti was part of a criminal racket that, among other things, conspired to kidnap Sliwa in retaliation for comments he made on a radio program about his father, John Gotti.

Sliwa was shot when he entered a rigged cab for a ride to work. He recovered from his wounds.

At "Junior" Gotti's first retrial, his lawyers acknowledged that their client was involved in the mob but said he gave up the life after pleading guilty to racketeering in 1999.

He chose not to testify. His third trial is scheduled for this month. He could face 30 years in prison if convicted.

Thanks to David B. Caruso