By Tom Leonard in New York Published: 6:33PM BST 14 Sep 2009  John Gotti Jr has gone on trial accused of racketeering Photo: AP  Mr Gotti, the son of the late head of the Gambino crime family, once New York's most powerful Mafia clan, insists he abandoned organised crime in 1999.  A key witness at the trial, for which jury selection started on Monday, is expected to be John Alite, a childhood friend of Mr Gotti and alleged Gambino assassin.  Earlier this year, he told a trial in Brooklyn of another reputed that Mr Gotti ordered a string of murders of rival gangsters.  Prosecutors insist Mr Gotti never gave up the family business and have charged him in New York with conspiracy linked to cocaine trafficking and three gangland murders.  His father, John Gotti Senior, was nicknamed the "Teflon Don" because of his ability to escape justice. The son has survived three previous trials where juries failed to return a verdict.  Prosecutors say they have new evidence and new witnesses against Mr Gotti, 45, who has already served time in prison for racketeering. He denies the charges.  Defence lawyers are expected to claim, as they have at previous trials, that he left the mob a decade ago and so the statute of limitations has expired on old charges relating to loan sharking, drug-dealing and extortion.  Prosecutors have responded by introducing two new murder charges, both allegedly connected to cocaine dealing in New York, and committed, they say, to create "fear and dread".  Former Mafia members are increasingly breaking the organisation's code of silence, or omerta, and giving evidence against each other.  The Gotti trial is likely to hear from various such "cooperating witnesses" to support a 26-page indictment detailing a sprawling criminal conspiracy running from 1983 to 2008.  While prosecutors claim Mr Gotti simply took over the Gambino helm when his father went to prison, dying there in 2002, his defence has accused the FBI of "disingenously" rehashing evidence that failed in previous trials.
John Gotti Jr, the son of one of America's most notorious Mafia bosses, has    gone on trial in a fourth attempt to convict him of racketeering.