Closing Argument: Defending (and Befriending) John Gotti, and Other Legal Battles I Have Waged - Hardcover

Bruce Cutler; Lionel Rene Saporta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609608312 ISBN 13: 9780609608319

Publisher: Crown, 2003

Synopsis

Bruce Cutler, one of the most famous lawyers in America, has never told his story—until now. Best known for his tenacious and highly publicized defense of John Gotti in the 1980s and early 1990s, Cutler personified a confidence, passion, and legal thoroughness that repeatedly defied a government determined to bring Gotti to his knees. A ubiquitous presence at Gotti’s side in and out of the courtroom—and on the front pages of newspapers around the country—Cutler became almost as infamous as his client. And, as John Gotti became a lightning rod for every prosecutor seeking glory, reputation, or promotion, Cutler too became a lightning rod for controversy. According to the feds, Bruce Cutler may have gotten too close, and they made sure that both he and his client paid the price.

Cutler, the son of a detective turned lawyer, resolved his choice of profession early in life and plunged headlong into the tumultuous and at times surreal world of the New York legal system. In Closing Argument, Cutler recounts his time as an aggressive, tireless assistant D.A. in Brooklyn; how he switched sides and became a fiercely dedicated defense attorney working with Barry Slotnick, one of New York’s
premier criminal attorneys; and the path that led him to John Gotti’s side in court. It was March 28, 1985,
to be precise: He was thirty-six years old, and it was a moment that would change both men’s lives forever.

Closing Argument is the inside story of how Bruce Cutler and John Gotti frustrated the feds so much
that they finally had to break the rules themselves to convict the so-called Teflon Don. The years Cutler and Gotti spent together were a kind of golden age of criminal (and in particular organized crime) litigation, and both lawyer and client were at the red-hot center of it all. What neither man may have realized then is that the famous trials were mostly about the government’s wanting to put an end to a certain way of life, one that John Gotti and his like embodied. The conviction of Gotti, and his subsequent death in 2002 while serving a life sentence in solitary confinement, marked the end of an era. Closing Argument is a glimpse into the world of John Gotti: the talk around the table at the notorious Ravenite social club; the murder of Paul Castellano; Gotti’s feelings about the treachery of Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and the alleged betrayal by Wilfred “Willie Boy” Johnson; and what it took to make it in a world with its own set of unbreakable rules.

This fascinating document makes clear that Gotti and Cutler were perfectly matched. Their inability to compromise, their full-throttle approach to their defense, and the charisma that made them the favorites of the press, were their strengths and, ironically, what made them such inviting targets to a host of prosecutors.

Bruce Cutler, in typical style, pulls no punches in Closing Argument. It is very rare for a practicing lawyer to talk with the kind of candor he does here, and it is rarer for any lawyer to ever become as passionate
and emotionally involved as he did with his client, John Gotti.

About this title

About the Author

BRUCE CUTLER maintains his office in New York City and has a national law practice. He has lectured at New York University School of Law, Fordham School of Law, and other top schools throughout the country, and has received countless tributes from bar associations and defense and civil rights groups across the nation.

LIONEL RENÉ SAPORTA lives in East Hampton, New York. Also an attorney, he grew up in Brooklyn, spent three years with Bruce Cutler in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, and later shared offices with Cutler in private practice.

From the Inside Flap

Bruce Cutler, one of the most famous lawyers in America, has never told his story―until now. Best known for his tenacious and highly publicized defense of John Gotti in the 1980s and early 1990s, Cutler personified a confidence, passion, and legal thoroughness that repeatedly defied a government determined to bring Gotti to his knees. A ubiquitous presence at Gotti’s side in and out of the courtroom―and on the front pages of newspapers around the country―Cutler became almost as infamous as his client. And, as John Gotti became a lightning rod for every prosecutor seeking glory, reputation, or promotion, Cutler too became a lightning rod for controversy. According to the feds, Bruce Cutler may have gotten too close, and they made sure that both he and his client paid the price.<br><br>Cutler, the son of a detective turned lawyer, resolved his choice of profession early in life and plunged headlong into the tumultuous and at times surreal world of the New York legal system. In <b>Closing Argument</b>, Cutler recounts his time as an aggressive, tireless assistant D.A. in Brooklyn; how he switched sides and became a fiercely dedicated defense attorney working with Barry Slotnick, one of New York’s <br>premier criminal attorneys; and the path that led him to John Gotti’s side in court. It was March 28, 1985, <br>to be precise: He was thirty-six years old, and it was a moment that would change both men’s lives forever.<br><br><b>Closing Argument</b> is the inside story of how Bruce Cutler and John Gotti frustrated the feds so much <br>that they finally had to break the rules themselves to convict the so-called Teflon Don. The years Cutler and Gotti spent together were a kind of golden age of criminal (and in particular organized crime) litigation, and both lawyer and client were at the red-hot center of it all. What neither man may have realized then is that the famous trials were mostly about the government’s wanting to put an end to a certain way of life, one that John Gotti and his like embodied. The conviction of Gotti, and his subsequent death in 2002 while serving a life sentence in solitary confinement, marked the end of an era. <b>Closing Argument</b> is a glimpse into the world of John Gotti: the talk around the table at the notorious Ravenite social club; the murder of Paul Castellano; Gotti’s feelings about the treachery of Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and the alleged betrayal by Wilfred “Willie Boy” Johnson; and what it took to make it in a world with its own set of unbreakable rules. <br><br>This fascinating document makes clear that Gotti and Cutler were perfectly matched. Their inability to compromise, their full-throttle approach to their defense, and the charisma that made them the favorites of the press, were their strengths and, ironically, what made them such inviting targets to a host of prosecutors. <br><br>Bruce Cutler, in typical style, pulls no punches in <b>Closing Argument</b>. It is very rare for a practicing lawyer to talk with the kind of candor he does here, and it is rarer for any lawyer to ever become as passionate <br>and emotionally involved as he did with his client, John Gotti.

Reviews

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."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Stellar criminal defense attorney Cutler, famed for his defense of the late "Teflon Don" John Gotti, provides another starry-eyed but entertaining account of representing organized crime figures. Like Bobby Simone, the Philadephia attorney who "dared to defend the mob" (The Last Mouthpiece), Cutler provides a gripping account of his high-profile trials, especially those involving Gotti. Cutler portrays his client as a brilliant, courteous, principled man who had the misfortune of growing up poor in a community where criminals garnered respect. Like Simone, he reviles those who became government informants like Sammy Gravano, lying to save their skins instead of taking their punishment like men. The book is organized chronologically, offering Cutler's take on seven years as a state prosecutor and concluding with Gotti's death. Given Cutler's talent in the courtroom and relative youth (53), this autobiography will no doubt be continued, to readers' delight. Recommend for large public library crime collections.
Harry Charles, Attorney at Law, St. Louis
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

His great hand engulfing mine, hoisting my little boy's body up above the waves: That's how I remember Murray, my father. He was a big man, six foot three inches, 215 pounds of heart and brawn. He was not only my father but also what many fathers are not--my father figure.

Murray was also my friend, although it's hard to recall him as such when I was growing up, disciplinarian that he was. I remember him telling me that my only true friends in life would be my parents. He was right, wasn't he? I mean, there's no limit to the love and protection afforded by your parents--the love of any other must be limited by self-interest, no? Or is this only the ranting of one paranoid lawyer-cop to his paranoid lawyer son? A legacy of vigilance, passed from centuries of pogrom victims in Lithuania, Hungary, and Austria, to my grandparents Irving and Bertha, and Harry and Sadie in the new world, and from their generation to Murray and Selma, who offered it to me. A legacy of loneliness, a fitting foundation for the egocentricity, pervasive distrust, and maniacal single-mindedness required of a successful trial lawyer.

I was born on April 29, 1948, in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the first son of the first son of the first son. Selma, my mother, was fond of recounting (amid the confirming nods and clucks of my grandmothers, Bertha and Sadie), as she'd bathe me or tuck me into bed, how she'd selected me herself from among all the other children at the hospital, how there'd been no more beautiful infant than I, no child so clearly special, "supernatural even." "I'll show you photos--you'll faint," the women in my family would aver with rolling eyes as I grew up. "You were special, number one double plus." So what can I say? I had a destiny to fulfill, and a kid can't safely turn his back on destiny.

At the age of twelve, in the late nineteenth century, Murray's father, my grandpa Irving, arrived in this country from Vilna, Lithuania, with his own father, for whom I am named. Irving was big like his son Murray. He seemed even bigger to me, as I was growing up. He married Bertha, whose family arrived in New York from Hungary at about the same time as the Cutlers; no Tinkerbell herself, standing nearly six feet, she and Irving seemed perfectly matched to my child's eye--two Tolkien-like giants from a kingdom before the dawn of time, come to the new world to establish a new kingdom where I would reign.

I recall Irving as a tough man, even tougher than my father, walking around Borough Park where he and Bertha resided (or West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, where he had a little shop manufacturing leather bands for hats and caps), smoking a big cigar in an orange cigar holder that he'd remove from time to time, with a massive bearlike paw, from where it protruded between huge upper and lower sets of teeth. He cared nothing for how he might appear to others--neither neat nor solicitous--and he was no doting grandfather but rather a gruff, protective presence whose brusque benevolence was mitigated by (as Murray and Selma would tell me) Bertha's warmth. In 1950, when I was only two, Bertha died of stomach cancer (which eventually claimed my father as well in 1994). I have sorely regretted not having had an opportunity to get to know her before she passed away. Years later, when I was a teenager, Irving remarried to Gertie, who was a kindly woman, but she was never my grandma.

My mother's parents, Harry and Sadie, who emigrated from a small town in Austria at roughly the same time (and age, twelve years old), lived nearby in Borough Park. Their house became a second home to me, a place I truly loved, where I would often go after school, a place of candy, cookies, attention--and freedom from my father's discipline. It was a place of learning as well, where Sadie taught me to multiply and to tell time. She was by far the funniest, most pleasant woman I've met to this day, with a great appetite for food and life in general.

I think Harry was the smallest grown-up I'd ever seen as a child. At five foot nine, he was positively Lilliputian compared to my father's Brobdingnagian family. But even his wife, my grandma Sadie, was five foot ten inches. Harry had gained weight when he stopped smoking sometime before I knew him, and I recall him always with cough drop box in hand; it was one of those antique-looking white boxes, depicting the bearded visages of the Smith Brothers on its front--despite the goyish name (and they might have changed it, as did so many immigrants), they looked like pious Jews to me, and I always associated them with Harry's devotion to Judaism. Harry and Sadie were considerably more devout than Murray's parents, Irving and Bertha. Indeed, Harry had lived in the basement of a synagogue when he was growing up; he spoke Yiddish and English equally well and read Hebrew, too. By contrast, I recall my father coming home one Chanukah season, dressed in a Santa Claus costume and carrying a Christmas tree.

Harry was in the lamp business, a traveling salesman with his office in the house. He would often drink a shot of schnapps before dinner. I remember making fun of this habit, probably because my father frowned on it, and my father's worldview was law then. To my shame, I remember laughingly calling Harry a shika, the Yiddish term for "drunk," as I'd heard my father refer to a particular drunken fellow we'd often see stumbling through our neighborhood. In any event, I was utterly unfair in my judgment, for despite his single shot before dinner, I'd never seen Harry act--or dress--in any way but fastidiously. He'd never leave the house without a white shirt and tie; in fact, I never saw him wear a sports shirt.

Harry and Sadie had three children. My mother Selma, the middle child, was the most talented and their favorite, I think. Sadie passed away at eighty-three in 1978, shortly after I broke up with my first wife, Gladys; I never told her about the divorce, for fear it would break her heart. Perhaps she divined it anyway, for a heart attack took her shortly after Harry died of heart failure himself. It was no surprise in Harry's case, given his weight and his excitable nature. Selma was high strung as well.

Murray and Selma met in Borough Park, where they both attended John J. Pershing Junior High School and New Utrecht High School, although Murray was six years ahead of Selma. They eventually met through mutual friends and began dating. At first Harry and Sadie were put off by how German Murray looked, so tall and blond, with blue eyes, and a policeman by then. They were relieved to find out he was Jewish--maybe not so religious, but at least a Yiddel. Murray and Selma would argue a lot, I'm not sure what over, but I was told that Selma would then leave apologetic notes on Murray's windshield and they'd make up. In any event, they soon married, had three children (my older sister Phyllis, my younger brother Richard, who is presently a federal prosecutor in California, and me), and remained married until death did them part nearly sixty years later. Upon marrying in 1941, Murray and Selma moved into the six-story apartment building at 4600 Ninth Avenue, where I was born, close by the homes of both Harry and Sadie and Irving and Bertha.

My father had by then made the sergeant's list and shortly thereafter would become a detective, assigned for a time to the squad of the Kings County District Attorney's Office, where both of his as-yet-unborn sons would one day work as assistant district attorneys. Murray graduated from neither Brooklyn College nor New York University, both of which he attended at night for a time after New Utrecht High School, but went directly to Brooklyn Law School (also at night) where he obtained his law degree. His day job, while attending college and law school, was working in Irving's hatband factory for eight or nine dollars a week. Rather than entering into the practice of law upon graduation from Brooklyn Law School, Murray chose to take the test for the New York City Police Academy. Today this might seem an odd career path, but it would have been easier to understand during the Depression, when a law clerk's starting salary was about five dollars a week (if such a position were even available for a young Jewish law school graduate), hardly enough to support a young wife and begin a family.

Murray finished in the top 300 out of some 35,000 who took the police academy test that year. His class at the academy, that of August 1940, was noted for being the first truly integrated one in academy history. Many alumni of the class went on to be extremely successful in public service: Al Seidman, later the New York City chief of detectives; Sanford Garelik, the New York City chief of the Transit Authority Police; and Fred Ludwig, who became the chief assistant to District Attorney Thomas Mackall. I recall my father reuniting with his classmates each June of nearly every year of his life at German Stadium in the Bronx.

At one such reunion, when I was a small boy, I remember an alumnus recounting a tale of my father as a young twenty-five-year-old police officer patrolling an elevated subway station in Brooklyn. A young girl approached him to request his help with four drunken youths who were accosting her. My father's lifelong friend Dave Silverstone, who was in the navy then and in uniform at the time, happened to have been chatting with my father when the girl approached. Murray's efforts to help her resulted in an all-out brawl; eventually someone handed him his nightstick, and with Silverstone's assistance, he was able to subdue the four, who were hauled into court and ordered to pay for my father's and Silverstone's uniforms, which had been shredded in the fray. The story has remained with me all these years as a recollection from a more innocent time in our city's history, when every misunderstanding didn't necessarily result in immutable tragedy.

Murray remained on the force only seven years, after which he began his career as an attorney. I didn't learn until my college years why he'd left the poli...

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0609608312
• ISBN 13: 9780609608319
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288