I’VE just finished reading a book about John Gotti, the New York Mafia boss whose sharp suits and quick wit transfixed reporters during a string of high-profile trials in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Dapper Don made it to the top of organised crime in the Big Apple by murdering anyone who got in his way.

But, unlike other Mafia chiefs, he remained in the big chair – at least for a while – by cultivating a media persona, carving out a niche as a loveable Robin Hood character that jurors were reluctant to condemn to a life behind bars.

Gotti had a good run in the second half of the 1980s, strutting out of court a free man three times in cases where a betting man would have backed the prosecution.

He was finally brought down in 1992 by a well-placed bug and a second-in-command who saw his chance to avoid life imprisonment by spilling the beans on his boss.

New York journalists Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain make clear in Gotti: Rise And Fall just how difficult it was for the authorities to find a jury who could give the Dapper Don a fair trial.

Jurors had to contend, not just with Gotti’s pals trying to bribe and intimidate them, but also with the excited chatter of the news crews who swarmed around the trials, filling the airwaves with all kinds of rumour and speculation.

The fourth jury – the one that sent Gotti away for life – was sequestered in a hotel for the whole trial, unable to watch any TV or read any newspapers, lest their minds were polluted.

In this country there is no such need to keep jurors hidden away for weeks – or at least there shouldn’t be.

The Contempt of Court Act 1981 protects juries, magistrates and judges by putting very strict limits on what journalists can say about active cases.

We can report that the defendant said X, Y and Z in court today, but we can’t add that he looked like a right shifty so-and-so who was obviously lying from the get-go.

Though sometimes annoying to we journalists, the Contempt of Court Act helps ensure that anyone accused of a crime gets a fair trial.