Gotti Jurors Deadlocked, One Going On Vacation

More than a week into deliberation on the fourth racketeering trial against one-time Gambino boss John Gotti Jr., the jury still hasn't come up with a verdict — and one of its members wants a vacation.

Eight days after lawyers rested their cases, the jurors continue to wrangle over charges that the 45-year-old mob scion was behind multiple gangland murders in aid of a cocaine ring. Further complicating things, one of the jurors, an unemployed receptionist, has a previously scheduled Thanksgiving week vacation to Mexico that would leave her unable to deliberate until Dec. 1. If the jury doesn't come up with a verdict in the day or so, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel will have to decide whether or not to send the jury home for a long break, or force them to deliver a verdict shorthanded. "I don’t want them to feel pressure or coercion," Castel told lawyers. "I want them to know if they need more time, they’ll get more time."

Meanwhile, Gotti's wife has sent a three-page missive to the Post, arguing, among many other things, that her husband is innocent of these charges and that two decades of trials and incarceration have left her family on the brink of destitution. "John has never stated he was an alter [sic] boy of sorts," she insisted. "He went to jail for nearly ten years for his mistakes — mistakes he made in the past."