NEW YORK _ A mob scion's step-grandmother is begging a Brooklyn federal judge to give the young man the minimum sentence so he won't become some hardened con during an extended prison stay.
John J. Gotti, who shares a name with his late, powerful Gambino boss grandfather, is up for sentencing on an arson charge as soon as November.
And when that happens, Elyse Lottier hopes the 24-year-old won't get the book thrown at him.
Lottier was the stepmom of Tricia Gotti _ John J. Gotti's mom _ until 2000. Despite being divorced from Tricia's father for 17 years, Lottier said "Tricia, her husband Peter and her five children have remained an integral part of my life."
Lottier wrote Judge Allyne Ross seeking leniency, saying she loved John as if he were her "own flesh and blood."
In June, Gotti admitted he was the 2012 getaway driver on a tough guy task to torch a Queens car whose driver had cut off the "Goodfellas" gangster Vinny Asaro in traffic.
Prosecutors said the Bonnano capo wanted revenge for the traffic violation and told an associate to burn up the car. The associate roped in Gotti and another man for the job.
The charges carry a five-year minimum and a 20-year maximum. Gotti, in his plea, also stipulated to his involvement as a driver in a 2012 queens bank heist.
"I think John knows what he did was wrong and understands that what he did only got him to where he is. I think he knows, now, that some things need to change," Lottier wrote to the judge.
In addition to any federal time, Gotti has to serve out an eight-year state sentence he received in March for selling oxycodone in Howard Beach and Ozone Park.
According to Lottier, the young man's brush with the law could be divine intervention, and part of that was up to Ross.
She sought a light sentence "so that his time in prison is an opportunity for him to turn his life around and it does not make him hardened and victimized and institutionalized."
Asaro has also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentence.
