CLOSING ARGUMENT: Defending (and Befriending) John Gotti, and Other Legal Battles I Have Waged

This is a highly detailed autobiography by criminal defense attorney Cutler, who gained national prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s as lawyer for convicted mobster John Gotti. With legal associate Saporta, Cutler describes in detail how his hyperaggressive, no-holds-barred courtroom style produced two acquittals for Gotti in high-profile federal trials; he also claims (with justification) that he would have gotten a third victory if the government had not been successful in getting him disqualified as legal counsel for the "Teflon Don." But the casual true crime reader will find out more about Cutler's early upbringing (the first third of the book) than any new information about the legendary and infamous Gotti of New York's Gambino crime family (even after the Don's death, Cutler is tight-lipped about his former client). The main villain in Cutler's story is the federal RICO Act, under which Gotti was charged and which Cutler contends is "a statute with lots of room for interpretation, and lots of opportunities for the government to destroy those whom it has decided worthy of destruction." But Cutler also displays clever legalese by stating early on, "I never believed John guilty of the things with which he was being charged." In fact, what is most remarkable in this book is Cutler's professed innocence about—indeed, admiration for—"the community of gamblers and street fellows who comprise what the government likes to call organized crime." He refuses to say anything stronger about Gotti than that his "alternate and rebellious lifestyle" made him "an easy target for over-reaching prosecutors seeking a scapegoat for all society's ills." (Feb.)