KYLE FOLEY - DEFENDING JOHN GOTTI - A PARODY OF THE BRUCE CUTLER MEMOIR

Kyle Foley is the founder of www.deductivemetaphysics.com, a website which can calculate the truth-value of metaphysical statements.  He lives in San Diego, California.  

Defending John Gotti
A parody of the Bruce Cutler memoir

When I first learned his name, saw his face and experienced his aura I was immediately smitten.  Here was not a traditional, lay-low mafia-boss, hunched over a cane, a hooked nose, feebly attempting to convince everyone that he was not a mafiose, instead here was a magno-hero, armed with the most supralicious pizzazz.  Here was the embodiment of not just the american dream but the human dream.  He obtained wealth, sky-power and respect on his terms not on the system’s.  John Gotti did not bow down to society’s artificial and suffocating decora, he did not yield to our government’s dictates which sap the marrow out of life – on the contrary!  He was so flasho-brilliant that he wisely discovered life’s grail of freedom through the strength and the ingenuity of his own wit.  He was akin to those colonels who rather than follow the uninspired orders of their generals, ignore them and encircle the opponent through brilliant tactical maneuvers.  He was similar to those math students who deny a teacher’s methods for problem-solving and arrive at the correct conclusion using simpler and easier means.  He was like that nineteenth century american poet who scorned the traditional rules of poetry and instead liberated all poets ages thence and employed a fresh, free-flowing, hypnotic verse that continues to dream-dazzle readers.  For all of us suffer from life’s sad wreck of impotence, all of us want more capital, more knowledge, more respect majestican and almost all of us, myself included, slog through this concrete maze of life adhering to outmoded and uncreative solutions and we all fail but John Gotti routinely discovered short-cuts through this maze and ultimately met success thrill-flowing with élan.
            It was thus with the most joyous splash-gold that i, bruce cutler, learned I would be defending him in court.  My partner John Hines who had been defending some of John Gotti’s friends told me that he already had his hands full with cases and that I should therefore take on the legendary mobster myself.  He advised me to go down to his favorite restaurant, the ravenite, and meet my new macro-illustrious client, a man so flasho-brilliantic that he even inspired convalescents to arise in energy.  I was highly excited to meet the pioneer of ideas in person.  A slight giddiness seized me and sent me into fight-waves and owl-cries.  At last, after months of dreaming of the exact contours of his charisma and contemplating the septessence of his panache I was going to witness that animated bullion up close and in person!  Flash-fire!  Sun! 
            I arrived at the ravenite when it was empty.  I saw John Gotti with some of his gambling buddies and although it was a casual setting he was still looking splasho-fantastic.  The surregal master of innovation smiled, greeted me and suggested we take a walk.  It was thus that our amazing partnership began. 
            Before the start of the trial one of the most deluxolicious moments occurred in my life when the surreal magno-king took me under his wing and the two of us went to the delisi clothing store on east fifty-fifth street, off fifth avenue in manhatten and there purchased my first double breasted italian suit.  Veni, vidi, vici.  Before I met John my taste in fashion consisted merely of off-the-rack offerings of french designers, except for the occasional kilgour and stanbury suit on sale at barney’s but now under the tutelage of the prince of stealth I now fully basked in the fervent splash-gold of masculine clothing of the finest sort.  I bought an einstein sigma basic suit by hugo chef, some blanchedalmond façonnable pleated pants from ricco da silva, a woven riverra silk necktie diagonally stripped with orange-red and midnight-blue, and sterling-silver, multi-color-enamel argyle cufflinks.  I was now prime and worthy to serve my client with the utmost of my ability.  I was raw, on fire, spasmo inside me, my fangs hungry for defense. 
            In order to obtain convictions against John and his codefendants under the rico statutes, the prosecutor, Giacalone had to prove the existence of a criminal enterprise, dedicated to the ransacking of goods which is defined as a group of individuals or corporations associated in fact who commit crimes for the purposes of the group.  She also had to prove a pattern of racketeering.  This could be shown by two or more violations of state or federal law.  In John’s case as he had pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter in the mcbratney case in 1975 for which he had been sentenced to four years in prison and had a hijacking conviction in 1969 for which he had also been sentenced, Giacalone would have no problem proving her two predicate acts.  Her problem would be demonstrating the existence of a gambino crime-family and that those acts were committed in furtherance of such.  
            As we discussed his case in the coming weeks I was time and again hypno-struck with potent, mental merlot as John elucidated to me brilliant legal maneuvers which were certain to leave the prosecution floundering in their own mud-grime.  Although he was not intimately acquainted with the vocabulary of law he nevertheless would astutely cut to the heart of the matter and offered stunning legal defenses that left even I macro-astonished and bewildered.  It was his unique mental acuity that was able to recognize the simplest and most effective means to decapitating a hydra.  Countless times I have seen many an attorney become bogged down and tripped up by meaningless details.  Just as when learning a foreign language, the average student will spend hours learning adjective and noun declensions, will memorize countless irregular strong and weak verbs, whereas the John Gotti sort of man will immediately skip such dull hogwash and will focus on the entire meaning of a paragraph and after a month of study will be able to envision shapes and images within the fog and the micro-minded students will be incapable of making even a stab at the entire subject’s architecture.
            One legal ploy he absolutely abhorred, for instance, was the distancing of one codefendant from the others to gain some meager advantage for that defendant.  The sparkling celesto-human categorically proscribed severance applications on behalf of one codefendant  that would imply that the remaining defendants were oil-vultures.  This was an intolerable breaking of ranks that would ultimately result in turquoise, onyx and jade for our enemy.  The government counted on the defendants crumbling and yielding to self-interest as they sought to save their own taste of freedom with severance motions, with conflict of interest motions, with cross-examinations designed to distance a particular defendant and summations noting that a defendant failed to indulge in the noxio-annoyance that the other rat-snakes had. It is a typical divide and conquer technique that the liverless government routinely employs in its insane fight-lust to squash anyone they deem unworthy of their ivory.  John in his nobility saw it as incumbent on him to protect his entire flock from their baser instincts.  John had no interest in risking anyone’s chances at trial.  He was the good steward of blithe and jasmine, he was the righteous shepherd ever vigilant of his sheep.  He ruthlessly enforced his iron maxim that the best defense is a unified defense.  So whenever an attorney made such a severance motion on behalf of a defendant, Gotti spit cyanide and seriously scolded the attorney with:
            - If you make an application like that again, you’ll be carried out of this fuckin’ courthouse wrapped in that rug over there.  You understand me?  Don’t you ever think of trying to separate one of my brothers from the crew!  We’re a team!  One hang, we all hang!  This is life or death, you son-of-a-bitch, this ain’t no high school mock-trial, this junk’s for real!  Now you take that severance motion and shove it up your ass!  You see that elevator over there?  You’ll be taking it down without the elevator!
            If any other client spoke to a lawyer as such, the lawyer’s knees would gel and his wrists would freeze and would cry to the judge that he couldn’t properly represent his client under such circumstances but when one’s client promulges righteous blaze, one cannot help but immediately defer to all their whims.  I was immensely grateful to John for, one, teaching me such an important technique and, two, using his colorful language to inform me of the matter’s significa. 
            But by far and away the area that Gotti excelled at was his ability to stare facts in their face, delve into their quintessence, dissect their core and from that analysis conclude a sugared deduction.  He had an uncanny, almost god-like ability to intuit how a certain proof, attitude, pulse or equivocation by the government or the defense would affect the public or a jury’s opinion of his fantasto-blithe.  John’s entire ethic concerned attacking a problem straight-on, grabbing it by the nose, without circumambulating.  He had no faith in technical defenses in court. I admit it is difficult to believe that the illustrious stallion would rather stay in jail and maintain his credo of direct, mono e mono engagement than get off on a technicality but by the holy grace of god I swear it is true.  My expertise concerned the minutiae, legal parameters, jurisprudent details, while John attended to the broad, sweeping vision, the macro-structure and the grand strategy of our defense.  Unlike other clients he also plainly told me when I had failed at a cross-examination, so when I returned from a verbal boxing-match and he said nothing, I patted myself on the back, drank an imaginary chardonnay, indulged in a fantasy cake and assumed I had done a good job.     
            John’s pulchrifying influence did not end with his counsel extraordinaire, he changed the ambience of the entire proceedings.  Everyone in the courtroom, from the clerks to the attorneys, from the judge to the jurors started to dress a little better, wearing newer, more flasho-brilliantic ties, shinier shoes, an immaculate shirt instead of a pastel, slacks well-pressed, wrinkle-free, perfectly clean, expensive.  They would stand a little straighter, annunciate in greater clarity, their movements more energetic, more meaningful.
            I would now read and hear that I was beginning to look and sound like the stunning anthro-lion.  Such comments titillated my pride with sharp juice.  I was in solid physical shape, my muscles bulging, my heart pumping as was the man of steel. Both of us were strongly built about the arms, chest and shoulders, both about the same height and weight, even though I was balding and John had a full head of hair.  When we were both attired in double-breasted suits I suppose comparisons were inevitable yet in reality no matter how strong one is, or how similar in height, or how alike in custom, nothing can equal the fanso-luminous flood-light that John irradiated.  In response to a newscaster’s comment that I resembled the brisk falcon-man I said that John was handsome, surging and agile and I was flattered if people thought I resembled him. 
            And yet on reflection additional it must be said that I was no passive agent, a pure receptacle of John’s goodness – in opposition!  I was largely responsible for the attention that my resemblance to the armored paladin received.  Some swift transformation was indeed consuming me.  I was young, foaming, adept, dexterous and new to the dramatic world into which I was suddenly thrust, new to working so closely with as mythical a personality as John and new to the massive publicity barrage and yet I remained swan-placid in the eye of the hurricane.  I bathed myself in the lavender of my new role as a hard-nosed, rough-and-tumble advocate for a supra-client who because of his maverick insistence on living outside the dull sauna of routine and instead took life by the bit and immersed himself in a flood of surprise, had become an easy target for overreaching prosecutors seeking a scapegoat for all society’s charnel.  They knew that capture of the legendary Gotti served as an easy route to their abominable rust-lust for advancement to judgeships, mayoralties, referee positions and so on.  The thrill was addictive and we proceeded from the piecyk case to the victories in the rico case and the o’connor case.  I plunged into the mesmer more and more, I found brisk rainbow-shine in defending my larger-than-life client.  I wholly embraced the entire milieu, the aura of respect and deference that I encountered wherever my swirling cosmos took me, whether it be at work, dining, shopping or strolling.  They say that a man’s sexual potency is inextricably interwoven with the sense of his own power and I undeniably felt powerful and august in this new role.  I was large, sweeping, a cougar, a strike-lion, equipped with stealth, prime for combustion.   
            How then do I respond to the inevitable: how can you defend a murderer?  The response is so obvious that I am routinely baffled that others fail to see it: aren’t we all murderers?  Do we not pay taxes to a murderous government, do we not vote for murderous presidents, do we ever elect public officials innocent of human blood?  Do we not support states, such as saudi arabia, who routinely execute dissidents?  Do we not purchase goods from a store that employs the chinese, a country that has no regard whatsoever for its workers’ safety and permits some 20,000 miners to die a year.  Does not our own government sanction the bludgeon of criminals and consigns them to hades, hypocritically abrogating our declaration of independence that all men are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  My interlocutors usually concede that, yes, our muck-lust for cheap oil and cheap labor contributes to the myriad demise of chinese and saudi citizens but they then contend that Gotti killed far and away more people given the proportion of his enterprise, making him more of a rage-beast and a rust-rake.  This is simply not true.  The huge majority, if not the entirety, of the people to have met the blade due to Gotti were other mobsters, who lived according to a kill-or-be-killed credo.  John’s world, much like world war two, was a sort of war-zone, angry soldiers shooting, rival crime-families killing.  He had to murder if he was ever to survive the grim, dog-eat-dog arena of mob-life.  My opponents then respond with some flippant, childish, simplistic, facile remark as: buying a t-shirt is not the same as ordering a soldier to kill someone.  This only shows how deeply mired in fallacy my debate opponents really are.  Who is worse the mud-hound or the goat-donkey that feeds him?  The two are both sides of the same coin.  It is the consumer, the citizen and the voter that feeds the murderer his steak and sirloin.  If all the so-called “democracies” of the world were to sanction china tomorrow then it would immediately grant its citizens rights, free its journalists and ruthlessly enforce safety standards. 
            And what of drugs?  Did John not contribute to the sale and distribution of illegal substances?  He did but let us remember that life’s most flashing imperative, that that entity which towers in such megalo-gigantic brilliance above the others, is, has been and always will be freedom.  Freedom to do what you want, go where you want to go, live where you want to live and, yes, smoke what you want to smoke.  I personally believe that the danger of drugs is exaggerated by our mainstream media and that politicians use it as an effective scapegoat to deflect public attention from their own failings and marriage to the viper.  But let us say for argument’s sake that drugs do in fact pollute the body with toxica, often end in costly, expensive addictions and that some will even go so far as to rob another in order to obtain the opio-fix they need.  We cannot rely on the government to hold us by the hand, walk us through life and make decisions for us that we in essence should be making.  With freedom comes responsibility and I say that freedom without freedom to harm one’s self is no freedom at all.  By banning drugs we deprive our society of one of the most pulchro-luminous and michelangelan[1] elements known to man, namely, drama.  Without the rage-specter of drugs hovering on the periphery life becomes boring since we are shielded from the cut-razors and the dragons.  Do not rich kids born to privilege, not obligated to work or struggle, make for themselves their own drama by continually running afoul of the law?  Has not idleness been known as the devil’s paradiso?  This in supplement: the enforcement of the drug-ban is too macro-expensive to fight and our resources can be better put towards allowing the citizen to keep his gold and enjoy life’s fruits, spasms, thrall and surge to the fullest.  Some would claim that by permitting others to explore and become trapped in the chasm, forever engaged to the boar, weakens our state, leaving us prey to the foreign leviathan.  But I say the age of war is over, that america is protected by two oceans humungo and we have nothing to fear.              
            And extortion?  We often forget that this country was founded on the principal of the individual.  It is the individual who tears, who magnifies, who blazes.  It is the individual that spread this country from a few outposts on the atlantic coast to a nation of three hundred million, spanning an entire continent glorioso in little more than four hundred years, and it is in the individual that one earns his most spiraling, comet-dashing essence.  We need to abandon this foolish notion that being a team-player and investing all of one’s spiritual stocks and bonds in the group rather than the self somehow cloaks one in an aura of saintliness.  That is a mere animal instinct we cultivated in our infancy, when we were scrounging around on the african plains.  Now that we have wrested such dazzlo-precious inventions from the void, and now that society rests on an impregnable foundation, we should scorn the virtue of group cooperation and embrace the much more lofty ethic of individual robustness and resilient egotism.  How much more magno-glorious one feels after he has thrown a party in his own honor than he would if he spent hours feeding the homeless!  And extortion is nothing more than an extreme form of expressing individual prowess.  Item, they who extort have simply grasped the sparklo-stunning truth that this is an intensely competitive world, that rather than us all banding together as a team, an enterprise that leads to endless in-fighting and conflict of wills, we should instead fend for our property and be ruthless in our acquisition of supra-treasure.  Individualism and competition moreover conforms more nicely to the irrefutable law of social darwinism that only the strong survive.  We human beings, if we are ever going to colonize the stars, need to expunge these rat-humans and anthro-lizards from our midst who at present are too much of a burden.  Thus we should live in a state of combat endlèssan and struggle infinito if we are ever to rid ourselves of these dead branches hanging on our tree.  The tables have turned and it is the now outmoded christian ethic which should be despised and in its place we should embrace the much more buoyant credo of positive competition to which extortion conforms.
            The trial began.  The prosecutor, Giacalone, her first saliva-attack concerned the discovery and subsequent failed use of the FBI informant willie boy Johnson.  Due to his irish heritage he was unable to fully penetrate the inner ranks of the mafia and since he was then abrogated and scorned he then worked for both the government and the mob simultaneously.  The bureau promised he would never be compelled to testify and that he would be immune to the prosecutor’s whip and snarl.  Giacalone however one day on making a routine request to the queen’s da office for any information that might assist her in unjustly quashing the legendary marlboro man, was shocked and delighted to discover that Johnson was an informant for the FBI.  She then decided to indict Johnson which would then require that she advise the defense counsel that Johnson was an informant.  In her drunken and depraved fantasy she envisioned him testifying in exchange for government protection.  The FBI bitterly fought with her over the matter, warning her not to attempt such a move that would only result in Johnson’s death.  She refused to be persuaded.  At the arraignment before judge nickerson, Giacalone acceded to bail for all the defendants except willie boy.  When asked why willie boy warranted different treatment Giacalone claimed that he had been a government informant for over fifteen years.  A silent hush cloaked the whole court in stun.  Gotti felt betrayed, adders in his ear.  Johnson never would testify and he was eventually gutted and slain after the trial, all thanks to Giacalone’s blind swine-lust for power and magnanimity.      
            Later on however the female slime-buzzard had second thoughts about ceding bail and found cause to punish Gotti by having his bail revoked.  She protested that in violation of his bond Gotti had committed illegal acts, explicitly, the intimidation and harassment of piecyk.  Piecyk himself had written an affidavit stating that he loved the miraculous eagle-man, that he to him was the lighthouse at the end of the ocean and an endless source of inspiration, bounty and vigor.  Nevertheless the judge concluded that more likely than not John had indulged in the knife and the blade and ordered his bail revoked. 
            I went to the ravenite to tell John of the decision.  I was wearing a calvin klein charcoal stripe wool three-button suit, some light-grey flat-front trousers, a gianfranco ferre black stripe dress-shirt, a golden-yellow silk neck-tie with black polka dots from armani, and some bruno magli black leather salvatore loafers.  John was wearing a prada brown corduroy velluto costa two-button suit, some double-pleated jet-black slacks, a duke of savoy blue-grey pocket shirt, a dark-grey ribbed cashmere scarf, a françois champagne reversible belt and to my surprise no tie.  It took a while to rouse the courage to tell him that no longer might daylight invigorate him with cheer, that he might never float and splash amid freedom’s ocean again, that his home henceforth might be a den of bandits, brigands and sword-merchants.  Yet to my surprise the agile social-scientist was not dwelling on past defeats but like the mystical lion that he was, was focused on the future.
            - don’t worry about a thing, we’re gonna win this thing because I gots the shots and you gots the guns.  We’re gonna show those creeps that I ain’t no stick-in-the-mud, lay-down-sally!  You got the goods to prove it!  We’re gonna fuckin’ rock these apes, you with your lawyer know-how, your kit and kaboodle, and me with my chumps, my sixth-sense and my charm.  We’re a team!  Ain’t nobody can stop us!  We’re the terrible twosome, the twin brothers of the dirty dozen!  That prosecutor ain’t got shit.  She’s a flea-bag and you need to show the judge that!  Expose her for the wench she is.  That little scum-slut is gonna get what’s coming to her or my name’s not the dapper don!     
            John then confounded everyone with one of the most selfless, the most humble, the most pious acts one can ever commit.  He was obligated to hand himself over to the government’s custody on a sunday but the surging meal-ticket instead showed up early on a friday.  Some would scoff at what they believe to be an insignificant, meaningless act but it wasn't not meaningless.  It showed a will most correct to heaven, a heart fortified, a mind patient, it exhibited a soul at ease amid the tornado, the rage-blast and the magma.  
            The whole place, jailor and jailee alike was aflutter with his arrival.  It took him half an hour to get acclimated and to begin holding court.  He was greeted as a hero, a stallion, a king in exile.  All yielded to him, all deferred to him.  The jailors rather than seeing themselves as punishers or hard men of iron and stone, now found themselves in the fortunate role as pages to the great khan, as footmen to the standard-bearer of freedom.   They were ablaze with his pizzazzum, they were tickled with his cosmos. 
            Besides John’s audiences with his inmate and unrelated lawyer courtiers, there were frequent meetings with his codefendants and counsel.  Procedures were more relaxed in this forum than in the federal court in which he was to be tried, but due to John’s regal chemistry, because he held the world in such sway and awe, a new, vibrant stringency reigned.   It was standard operating procedure among attorneys visiting clients in the manhattan correctional center to float around, visiting this inmate-client in one conference room and that in another and visiting perhaps other past or potential clients, but not so when their client was none other than the rugged rage-tiger.  No push-over, door-mat, passive, timid client this, but a fight-being, a man of explosions, crackle and spice.  Here not the state’s rules applied but John’s rules.  He promulgated an unofficial edict: when a lawyer came to see John he was to come and see him and him only.  John demanded and required a lawyer’s full attention, for he was the cobra of unparalleled bite, he was the stallion of incomparable blackness, he was the ram of undeniable charge.  If a lawyer came to the manhattan correctional center to see another client or inmate then he would not be seeing John on that day.
            When I first came to see John after his remand I was in a conference room, chatting with a man whom the government accused of being the head of a different crime-family.  John walked by the door clearly fuming bellicose smoke.  Ab initio I thought incarceration had hatched maggots in his dreams but I was wrong.  The manhattan correctional center was to him a paradiso wherein inmates and jailors fawned over him.  At first he was cold and distant in our meeting but then he finally justifiably scolded me for disrespecting his tumult:
            - did you fellas come to see me down here at 150 park row or somebody else?  Cause I got two nice sunny-side-up eggs and a slice of bologna waitin’ for me upstairs which i’d like to get down and chow at right now.  I don’t need any two-bit lawyers holdin’ my hand.  And make sure when you come back that you come and see me and no one else.  I won’t tolerate such ragamuffin, slap-down behavior.  Don’t you forget who I am!  I’m the biggest bad-ass this jail has ever seen.  I ain’t no slime-faced, willy-nilly prankster, i’m big and I got the bucks to prove it!  When you come here to see me you make sure you’re wearing your sunday fuckin’ best or i’ll make sure they tie some millstones around your neck and have your sorry ass thrown into a river, you hear me?!
            The omnivorous man-panther was not speaking in hyperbole, he was simply enforcing order in his kingdom.  When he made his statement I instantly chastised myself and made certain never to offend his grace, the prince of mulberry street again.  As in any court, the maintenance and semblance to protocol was absolute.
            The initial proceedings of the trial were over and now it began in earnest. I was dressed in a two-button, dim-grey travel-blazer by guiseppe romanelli, an oxford button-down, charcoal shirt, chessboard, overcheck dark-blue and black tie from marcello carvino, some royal herringbone oatmeal-colored business slacks and some ascot derby shoes.  John as usual was attired in the most hypno-enthralling fashion, including a frederico iacoboni double-breasted suit jacket, a prince of wales, check lilac shirt, a light-indigo silk tie with maroon polka dots, some navy cord-pleated pants and was also wearing his françois orleans cologne for the first time.  
            Giacalone opened by drawing on the blackboard the elaborate structure of the cosa nostra, complete from the capo through the lieutenants to the soldiers.  When she finished my battalions and brigades finally marched into combat.  By this time I had become so intimate with the towering megalo-man, was infused so completely with his ethic, credo, philosophy, contingents and spirals that when I spoke to the jury it was no longer I who was speaking but the raw stealth-falcon himself.  I was John Gotti.  His essence flowed in me, around me, his ebullient surge flowing through me. 
            - ladies and gentleman of the jury, (i erased the chalkboard) what you have just been presented is pure fiction.  The prosecution, the district attorney and the police have found a convenient scapegoat for all of society’s ills, namely, mob-life.  They have created this fantasy in the mind of the public, threaten us with this fanciful image and then rescue us from the sharks thus creating the illusion that they are working when in reality myriads of homeless litter our streets, our schools are in disrepair and none of us here will see the pensions promised us, or be able to pay for the health care we will so desperately need in later life!  Fiction!  That is what the government’s case is!  They will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute John Gotti, a man whose sole crime has been his flashy clothes, his brilliant hair, his lavish parties for loyal friends and his near universal congeniality with the public and yet our real problems remain ignored!  The case stinks!  Full of rancid stew and wreaking garbage!  Greed!  That is what this case is about!  The greediness of prosecutors and law professionals who want swift and easy promotions where the big bucks are to be made and in so doing, they invent these atrocious monsters, paying the media heaps of kickbacks, then save us from them, thus ensuring their professional advancement!  They’re rotten to their core!  They’re the true gangsters!  And now with the legislature’s aid they have passed these new rico laws so as to make the bagging of these alleged mobsters easier!  All these crimes are are a rehash of crimes that Gotti has already served time for!  The prosecution has sold their souls to the devil in exchange for a quick and easy road to wealth.  True and honest work lies in defending the good and prosecuting the evil yet these prosecutors instead would attack an imaginary chimera and thus earn their sack of money and in the process destroy a perfectly innocent human being!  Don’t be fooled by their fairy tale!  Envy is the green-eyed monster that is driving this case, not truth!  They’re envious of Gotti’s lifestyle, envious of the crowds that follow him, envious of his dress and his immaculate appearance!   Look at the facts!  And the facts that you will soon see will confirm that Gotti is anything but a mobster but instead is wholly devoted to charity, loves his wife and kids, would never hurt a flea and is proactive and hands on in the community. 
            Then I performed one of the most hyper-dramatic acts a defense-lawyer has ever performed in his opening statement which was none other than the slam-dunking of the government’s documents into the trash can.  Oft would it be tried again both in cinema and in reality yet in my opinion it was a one-time supernova of brilliance, for in that moment I was so intoxicated with angry vodkum, so fraught with spasmodic frenzy that the act was stripped of all its pretense and firmly entrenched in the real.  I was bulging, furious, wild, savage, the lions were my brothers and geronimo was my father.  And it was right at that time although I would sometimes fret in anxo-crushing despair thereafter over the verdict’s outcome, that all the pieces of the case fell into their pre-assigned spot.  I was in a groove, unstoppable, like a pool-shark who could place the cue-ball anywhere he wanted on the pool table.  When I came back to the defense table the king of panache shook my hand and thence he knew I was his lawyer til death.
            The prosecution’s case itself was weak.  The only evidence they really had was a smattering of gambling tapes in which John did indulge in some brute talk lionèskan but never mentioned any “criminal” activity.  There was some testimony of coconspirators but these invariably proved unreliable.  They also tried to establish that the proceeds of a robbery of an armored truck stuffed the coffers of the gambino crime-family but even the so-called perpetrators laughed at the suggestion that anyone paid for their congress with the cobra.  They denied acquaintance with John’s mountains and lakes, nor had they ever shaken hands with the stunning galaxo-man.           
            One mobster-turned-defector the government banked on to bolster their case was dominic lofaro yet he too eventually proved an unreliable cloud of ash.  A few times he wore a wire and caught Gotti uttering some words along the lines of: “you tell him that i, me, John Gotti, i’ll sever his motherfuckin’ head if he’s going to do that,” yet in isolation, out of context, the statement proved no conspiracy of slaughter.  Then during his examination lofaro performed an elaborate and shocking about-face.  He had initially confessed to some seventeen apoplexic applications of the kill-knife yet at the conclusion he was asked if he had in fact committed the murders, he responded to the surprise of everyone that he had not.  When asked why he had lied, he said that he wanted to earn the government’s crop of pleasantica and its horn of spice.  In reality the state knew that lofaro was a liar yet it reasoned that even false testimony would plant in the jury’s collective mind a grim portrait of mafia bludgeon.  Lofaro was eventually offered some surge and manna for his testimony even though his statements concerned nothing but the poltergeist. 
            The next witness the government interviewed which subsequently imploded in death-shadow was jimmy cardinale.  He was a one time gofer for John Gotti who contracted a malaise of heroin infestation.  Prior to his testimony he contacted us and bitterly poured verbal acid on the prosecution, calling Giacalone a whore-dog.  We taped the conversations and showed the transcripts to the judge.  In it he said that the government was compelling him to lie and threatening him with slashing roach.  This arose because the state would not accommodate him amid the jail’s lions.  When an informant-witness’ desires are met with the maul they invariably resort to hate-vengeance.   These statements were indeed a severe womp to the giacolone's case but such embarrassment was just desserts for the government’s hypocrisy.
            Towards the end of the government’s case which was now teetering on outright collapse, mathew traynor was called to the stand.  Originally giacolone planned to have traynor hypnotize the jury in a flood of mafia rage-gore, recounting tale after tale of freak, incident and poison.  But once again the lord blessed us with enjeweled fortune.  Traynor called us from jail and stated that he was no longer testifying for the government but for us.  He was a valium addict who demanded his preferred drug in exchange for some juicy testimony.  The manhattan correctional center resident physician refused to write a prescription for his shoulder soreness so giacolone ordered him to see a private physician at beth isreal hospital in manhattan.  He duly submitted to the dubious practice of peddling drugs yet in spite of this fulfillment of demands he still disagreed with giacolone regarding his planned testimony.  Naturally she raged and bellowed and punished him with relocation to a federal prison all the way out in minnesota. On the stand traynor confessed to being fed copious amounts of zesto-beautiful valium yet the statement per se would cause much more rage-tumult if it could be categorically established.  We attempted to subpoena the nurse who seemed to be feeding the insatiable and salivating traynor his supply of valium yet the prosecution objected and the judge sustained, apparently the state will allow its prosecutors to be charged with some but not gross misconduct. Under my questioning, although visibly a nut-case and a schizo, traynor utterly ridiculed the prosecution, calling Giacalone a wart-tart, a sex-kitten and rocks for brains.  All that was irrelevant and the judge warned me to remain more on topic but it nevertheless fluttered the courtroom with laughter and clearly reestablished the initiative in our favor.  Eventually he testified that he never met John, had never shaken the flash-god’s hand, nor heard anyone refer to him as boss of the gambino family.   
            The prosecution then called some seventeen witnesses in rebuttal, mostly jack-a-nape FBI agents, their careers grimed with corruption, their reputations tarnished with swine-gore.  I flat-out, up-down, head-on laid into them.  I cross-examined them like a cougar stalks its prey.  I was a lion, a boar, panther-aggressive.  I routinely exposed their slip-shod, unsupportable testimony for the foul bratwurst that it was!  It was for these performances that the media coined the new verb to brucify, often used as the passive adjective, brucified, which signifies none other than to rip into a witness’s foundation, expose its shaky regions, then demolish his house of evidence in deafening tumultua. 
            John and I did not even bother to put up a defense since the prosecution’s case consisted of such ants, termites and rodents.  Our cross-examination sufficed to hate-wreck their fragile house of cards.  The summations themselves were anticlimatic.  We had so thoroughly sliced and diced the case against the indomitable white knight that a soaring speech replete with maximo was not necessary.  I had already paid rich homage to my hero and to do so again would be repetitive and boring.  
            The jury would take some five days to render its verdict.  Unfortunately it has been subsequently alleged that John Gotti survived his ordeal not due to my defense but to the bribery of one of the jurors.  While it is true that one of the jurors was bribed, it is also true that the bribe complemented my defense, not replaced it.  Had I juggled falsehood throughout the trial and failed to “brucify” those seventeen rebuttal witnesses, the bribed juror would never have been able to persuade the eleven others of the undercover commander-in-chief’s megalo-blithe.  Most of the other eleven had already decided in their hearts that John’s rivers clearly did flow of all the ivory and the silver that I alleged.  Others will retort that my defense of bribery only adds to the allegation that I have no concern for the truth and that the stark sunlight of justice does not shine for me.  In reversemento, no one loves truth’s surregal bounty more than I yet it is impossible to convince the public of the utility of the robust individualism I advocate which justifies extortion, nor will anyone realize the superb mineral of freedom which justifies drug-dealing.  Thus John and I had to resort to unconventional tactics to win his just release.       
            George pape was a middle-aged suburbanite with a taste for whiskum’s vexo-blithe, periodically unemployed, married with two kids.  In the construction business he had made the acquaintance of several mobsters who had connections to the gambino crime-family.  He was never actually employed by them or suffered from their barricudica but he did in fact know how to contact them when he assumed the mantle of juror.  When he was called for jury duty and realized he might sit on the Gotti case he immediately saw the opportunity for financial bonanza. Pape adroitly answered all questions during his examination so as to convince the judge of his non-bias.  Once on the jury, in exchange for sixty thousand dollars he agreed to advocate the clandestine prime minister’s case.  The government took every precaution to certify that the defense in no way could contact the jury yet they never suspected the opposite would occur.  It is thus with the utmost confidence that I assert that the lord engineered this entire gift, for what are the odds of a juror being selected who had ties to the underworld of extortion and larceny?
            On friday march 13th 1987, the verdict of innocence was justly rendered and my royal client was a free man.  Two years later I would defend him again in the o’connor case and of course demolish the prosecution, pour their evidence in the grinder and, yes, brucify their witnesses.  The government made a hasty, disorganized attempt to jail the agile man-panther and failed miserably.  In 1991 however the feds had managed to place a bug in the most secret of locations, right in the apartment of an old widow’s home that Gotti would use for his most private conversations.  Hours of damaging conversations were gathered and thus there was no hope of the maintenance of his freedom.  The government invented an absurd excuse to have me disbarred from defending my client which was simply part of their immoral scheme to jail the flashing tiger-human. 
            I would go on to more successes, more magno-triumphs and more brillio-trophies.  I would continue to brucify witnesses and by defending mobsters would continue in my quixotic crusade to vouch for a radical notion of freedom and an extreme form of individualism.  Countless journalists hungering for my gold sought to interview me and a flood of articles were written about my augustum in such respectable publications as the new york observer, the manhattan lawyer and gq.  A flattering homage to my person was written in an article in the new york times, accompanied by a cartoon with me dressed as rambo, a strong testament to my masculinity.  I even earned the superb moniker of iron bruce and from that moment on countless mobsters would hunger for my austere falcon to defend them in court from the irrational government’s narrow interpretation of freedom and its absurd renunciation of the constitution.         
 
 
clarification
 
            It is surprising how many of the ideas herein originate from bruce cutler’s actual memoir.  He does not believe in extortion or justified murder or that Gotti committed any of the crimes for which he was charged but he does say that John held court in jail, that he promulgated an unofficial edict that a lawyer could only see him and no one else on a day that he would see him.  He also describes his dress, though not in such detail.  He will also quote John’s foul language but only one or two sentences at a time but the death-threats were included.  I did not read his actual opening statement but snippets of it in another book and it most likely is close to the original but he does not say that the prosecution sold their souls to the devil.  He does boast about throwing the governments’ documents in the trash and does claim that John had a good legal mind.
 
 


[1] michelangelan: beautiful