Reputed Crime Boss Gotti Freed in Assault Case : Mafia: The ‘Teflon defendant’ is acquitted for the third time in five years. However, prosecutors are not giving up.

John Gotti, the reputed head of the nation’s most powerful organized crime family, was found not guilty Friday of assault and conspiracy in the shooting of a union officer, prompting shouts and applause by his supporters in court and enhancing his reputation as a difficult defendant to prosecute.

After four days of deliberations, a jury of seven men and five women in a New York state court found the flamboyant, dapper alleged head of the Gambino crime family not guilty of all charges in the 1986 shooting of John F. O’Connor, a former vice president of a Carpenters Union local.

Co-defendant Anthony Guerrieri, 60, a Gotti associate, also was acquitted.

It was Gotti’s third acquittal since 1985, and a clear setback to organized crime prosecutors, who had hoped to send Gotti to prison, perhaps for life, as a persistent felony offender because of convictions in 1969 and 1974.

As the jury foreman read the verdict of not guilty, Gotti, 49, formed a fist and pumped it back and forth in victory. His large diamond pinky ring sparkled in the brightly lit courtroom as his arm moved in rhythm to the foreman’s recitals of innocence. Gotti’s lawyer kissed him and shook his hand, and Gotti replied: “Nice job.”

Gotti’s supporters broke into applause and cheers of “Yeah, Johnny.” The judge, Edward McLaughlin, quickly quieted the courtroom, threatening to impose 30-day jail terms unless the outbursts stopped.

Gotti and Guerrieri were charged with commissioning the Westies, a violent gang from Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, to shoot O’Connor, who was wounded in the legs and buttocks. The shooting reportedly was in retaliation for a carpenters’ union attack that damaged a mob-linked restaurant that had been renovated by non-union workers.

During the two-week trial, the jurors, who were not identified, were sequestered to prevent any attempts at tampering.

After the verdict, juror Richard Silenski, an unemployed actor, said he had discounted the testimony of the government’s star witness, former Westies gang member James (Studs) McElroy, who is serving a 60-year federal prison sentence for murder and other crimes.

“The government did nothing to lead me to believe that Mr. Gotti would have a hand in this,” Silenski said. “I feel justice was done by 12 people.”

“There was nothing to connect Mr. Gotti to what happened--zilch,” added another juror, who refused to be identified.

Outside of court on Centre Street in lower Manhattan, spectators packed the sidewalk. Shouts of “Right on, John!” greeted the man New York’s tabloids have dubbed the “Dapper Don” as he departed for a victory celebration in a social club that is often the object of police photographic surveillance.

Gotti, who wore a stylish black double-breasted suit and black and red tie, waved as his car departed.

At the time of his arrest, Gotti had given 3-1 odds that he would beat the case. But investigative interest in him remains intense.

Organized crime experts believe that Gotti assumed leadership of the Gambino family, the largest of New York City’s five organized crime families, after the previous boss, Paul Castellano, was assassinated in front of a Manhattan steakhouse.

“John Gotti remains the subject of investigations by the Justice Department,” a senior department official said in Washington. The official would not elaborate on the nature of the scrutiny.

“One acquittal won’t have any effect on anything else,” said Ron Goldstock, director of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. It had helped bring the latest case, which was prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

” . . . If you put this in context, there is a long history of prosecutions of mob families. There have been mostly convictions and some acquittals. An acquittal doesn’t stop future convictions from happening.”

Goldstock was asked if the government’s loss gave Gotti an aura of invincibility.

“There is largely a press-created aura of John Gotti, and this enhances it . . . in the sense that he’s viewed as the Teflon defendant,” Goldstock said.

In 1985, Gotti was accused of assaulting a refrigerator repairman and robbing him of $325 during an argument over a parking space. But, when the repairman learned of Gotti’s reputation, he showed little inclination to press the case. Instead, he checked into a hospital and developed amnesia. When it came time to testify, he could not remember who struck him.

The judge dismissed the case.

After a week of deliberations in 1987, a jury found Gotti, his brother Gene, and five other defendants not guilty of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Prosecutors had feared that a third acquittal would add to the impression that Gotti is invincible. But Bruce Cutler, his lawyer, in a moment of candor, told the jury that he expected further legal difficulties.

“No matter what happens in this courtroom, we’ll be back in another courtroom,” he said during closing arguments, in which he accused prosecutors of creating a “corrupt, poisoned case.”

In his two hours of instructions to the jury, the judge touched on Gotti’s alleged Mafia ties. He told jurors that Gotti’s alleged position as head of the nation’s largest organized crime family should not sway them toward conviction if the government had not proved its case.

“With regard to La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia . . . being associated with such an entity is not a crime in itself and membership is not a substitute (for) proof of the elements of the charges contained in this indictment,” the judge said.

Central to the prosecution’s case were poor quality wiretaps of conversations made in 1986 at the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club, where Gotti meets with associates.

Prosecutors charged that, in the key conversation, Gotti said: “We’re gonna, gonna bust him up,” referring to O’Connor.

The defense argued that that sentence was inaccurate and that it was not contained in transcripts made public during Gotti’s 1987 trial.

Prosecutors sought to back up the tapes with the testimony by McElroy. He said he had met with Gotti during a wake for an underboss of the Gambino family. In another meeting, he said, the leader of the Westies relayed word that Gotti wanted O’Connor “whacked.”

During his summation, Cutler made an all-out attack on McElroy’s credibility, accusing him of making a deal with the government, labeling him a “psychotic killer” and comparing him to “swill and snake rats.”

New York bureau researcher Lisa Romanine contributed to this story.