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Gotti's Attorneys Fight For N.Y. Trial

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 13, 2008

TAMPA - Calling the Tampa prosecution of John A. "Junior" Gotti a desperate effort to overcome the federal government's losing streak against him, defense lawyers Friday filed a motion seeking to move the case to New York.
Defense attorneys also allege in court papers that the government, frustrated over repeated failures to convict Gotti, brought the case in Tampa to put the defendant at a disadvantage.

Gotti was arrested last month after a federal grand jury in Tampa handed up indictments charging him and five other men with participating in a vast conspiracy of murder, drug trafficking and witness tampering under the auspices of the Gambino organized crime family.

The son of the late "Dapper Don," John J. Gotti, Gotti also is accused of participating in the Gambino family-related slayings of three men in New York: George Grosso, killed Dec. 20, 1988, in Queens; Louis DiBono, killed Oct. 4, 1990, in the World Trade Center parking garage; and Bruce John Gotterup, killed Nov. 20, 1991, at Rockaway Beach & Boardwalk in Queens.

"This case comes just shy of two years since the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York - after three deadlocked juries failed to convict Gotti - dismissed an earlier RICO indictment comprised of similar charges and covering a similar timeframe," the motion filed by Gotti's attorney states.

"There is strong evidence to support the conclusion that the government's decision to bring this case in Tampa is another in a string of tactical maneuvers designed to deny Gotti his right to a fair trial in what has become an epic quest to convict him," the motion adds.

Lawyers note in the motion that most of the events covered by the indictment happened in New York, all of the defense witnesses and many government witnesses live in or near New York and Gotti's defense team practices there.

"Gotti, who is not even alleged to have set foot in the Middle District of Florida, may well be unable to bear the considerable expense of trying this case 1,200 miles from home," the motion states. "Nevertheless, despite the utter lack of a palpable connection to Tampa, the government indicted Gotti here in what can only be characterized as a last-ditch effort to overcome its three-time losing streak."

The defense attorneys estimate it will cost Gotti about $50,000 to fly in and house defense witnesses for the trial.

The investigation that led to the indictments is related to the 2006 prosecution in Tampa of Ronald "Ronnie One Arm" Trucchio, a captain in the Gambino family who was sentenced to life after being convicted of racketeering.

That trial centered largely on activities in New York and New Jersey but also focused on a brutal battle for control of the lucrative valet parking business in the Tampa area.

One of the five others indicted at the same time as Gotti is from Tampa - James V. Cadicamo, who managed Club Mirage, a nightclub on Hillsborough Avenue.

A federal appeals court in July upheld the convictions of Trucchio and two other defendants in that trial.

One of the defendants in the Trucchio trial, Kevin McMahon, lost a motion to move that trial to New York. In her ruling, Judge Susan Bucklew, who is not presiding in the Gotti case, noted that the burden in such defense motions is on the defendant.

"A criminal defendant does not have a right to be tried in his place of domicile," Bucklew wrote. She noted that a substantial amount of the racketeering in that case happened in Florida and the other defendants had not sought to have the trial moved.

Although others were named in a separate indictment in a related case, Gotti has no co-defendants.

Another defendant in the Trucchio case, John Alite, has not gone to trial. During the Trucchio trial, he was fighting extradition from Brazil after having fled to Latin America.

Nothing has happened in the Alite case since February, when his attorney filed a motion to delay a status conference scheduled for April.

During the Trucchio trial, a witness, Kevin Bonner, described Alite as Gotti's right-hand man in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Bonner cooperated with prosecutors in the hope of receiving relief from the state prison sentence he is serving for multiple armed robberies.

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