"When I was a brand new prosecutor at the Southern District of New York, the office's elite mob prosecutors tried John Gotti Jr. three times within a year. All three times, the jury hung. Throughout the doomed prosecutorial trilogy, I'd go over to the courtroom and watch bits of the trial, enthralled at the cinematic spectacle: witnesses named Mikey Scars and Little Joey, bugged social clubs, beefs and sitdowns and hits gone good and bad."
"By that point, I had become a supervisor in the organized crime unit, and we wanted no part of it. Long story short: Gotti successfully moved the case back up to the SDNY, it landed in my lap, we tried him again, and the jury hung again. After the trial ended, we spoke with the jurors. About half of them wanted to convict, and the other half thought he was guilty but objected to the serial prosecutions of the Gambino Family boss."
A prosecutor recounts multiple trials of John Gotti Jr. in the Southern District of New York that repeatedly produced hung juries. After three hung juries the indictment was dismissed, but a subsequent fourth trial brought by Florida prosecutors returned to SDNY and hung again. Jurors split between wanting conviction and opposing serial prosecutions, with some describing repeated trials as unfair. The episodes reveal that juries can exercise de facto nullification by acquitting or refusing conviction for political, emotional, or fairness reasons, and that judges do not instruct jurors to provide explanations for verdicts.
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