RAP'S GOTTI BROTHERS GLEEFULLY EMBRACE NOT-GUILTY VERDICT

NEW YORK -- The trial of rap moguls Irv and Christopher Gotti ended
Friday with shouts, tears and an outbreak of mass hugging after both
men were found not guilty of money laundering.

Family members and well-wishers who had packed one side of the
courtroom roared and cried as the jury foreman said "not guilty" over
and over. A court clerk warned the revelers to keep it down until the
jury left the room.

"Now you can holla," the clerk said once the last juror filed
out.

And holla they did. The Gottis, founders of a once-successful rap
label called Murder Inc. -- since renamed The Inc. -- hugged each
other, their lawyers and then dozens of other people, nearly all of
whom were wet-eyed. Ja Rule, one of The Inc.'s biggest stars, leaped
onto a courtroom bench and all but jumped into Irv Gotti's arms. Even
two of the jurors asked that the brothers visit a back room so they
could embrace the pair.

"They took my life from me for three years," Irv Gotti said, referring
to federal prosecutors and their investigation. "I just want my life
back."

Both men were facing up to 20 years in prison for taking "dirty,
filthy street money," as Assistant U.S. Attorney Carolyn Pokorny
called it, from a notorious drug dealer and gang leader named Kenneth
"Supreme" McGriff. He and his underlings allegedly dropped shoe boxes
stuffed with bills at the Manhattan headquarters of Murder Inc. The
Gotti brothers pumped $65,000 into a straight-to-video movie called
"Crime Partners," an investment the government portrayed as a scam
designed to help McGriff cover up the source of his funding in the
event of an audit.

Irv, 35, and Christopher, 38, denied it all. They readily admitted
being friends with McGriff, who was a criminal legend in the '80s in
Queens, where the Gottis -- then named Lorenzo -- grew up. But they
said that their film venture was a legitimate attempt to make a profit
and that all the stacks-of-cash stories were false. They claimed, too,
that associating with McGriff was good for business because it brought
the label street cachet.

The jury believed them.

"The prosecutors had nothing, nothing, nothing," said juror Gloria
Menzies, 60, one of the two who had requested some hug time with the
Gottis. She spoke on the sidewalk near the courthouse while holding
the hand of Ja Rule, who was smoking a cigar and grinning. "Everything
was hearsay."

That might overstate it, but the case against the Gottis was pretty
flimsy. When the brothers were indicted in January, the government
alleged that Murder Inc. was secretly controlled by McGriff. At trial,
prosecutors never tried to prove that. The government did offer plenty
of evidence that money flowed from the Gottis to McGriff, but as the
defense team pointed out, it's not a crime to give money to a
criminal. ("Guilty by association," they kept calling it.) Missing
were the sort of bank records you would expect in a case like this --
a gotcha deposit followed by a gotcha check.

Instead, the heart of the prosecution's case consisted of a lot of
chummy text-message traffic between McGriff and the Gottis and a
procession of unsavory witnesses, some of whom are in prison. One was
a former pimp. Another witness, one of McGriff's violent henchmen,
admitted that he'd tried to kill one of his boss's girlfriends when
she refused to have an abortion.

The government was also up against defense attorney Gerald Shargel,
who is to sarcasm what Toscanini was to classical music -- a maestro.
He heaped so much scorn on the prosecution during his summation
Wednesday that the laughs from the pro-Gotti side of the courtroom
prompted the judge to threaten to bounce the audience out of the room.

It probably didn't hurt, either, that the Gottis had a few celebrities
in their corner. Rappers Jay-Z and Fat Joe came to the trial, as did
Def Jam executive Russell Simmons. Ashanti, another of Irv Gotti's
discoveries, was on hand for closing arguments. She nibbled on
Twizzlers and signed a few autographs.

Still, the jury took two full days to deliberate. The Gottis paced for
hours on Thursday and Friday. Irv kneaded a silver chain with a giant
"V" as though it were a set of worry beads.

Jurors started out Thursday by voting 10 to 2 for acquittal, Menzies
said. They announced that they had reached a verdict right at 6
o'clock Friday evening, as everyone in the courtroom was putting on
their coats and getting ready to head home for the night.

The Gottis -- who took the surname of infamous Queens mobster John
Gotti -- never testified and didn't speak to reporters during the
trial, but they couldn't stop talking once the verdict was read. Irv
left the federal courthouse at Cadman Plaza screaming, flanked by his
lawyers. He quickly turned serious, then angry.

"I would never have worked this hard," he said, facing a scrum of
television cameras and yelling for emphasis, "and jeopardize it by
doing something stupid and illegal."

Christopher Gotti took a lower-key approach, hugging his family and
whatever jurors happened to show up for this sidewalk festival. Asked
if he planned to start using his real last name, he shrugged.

"I started using the name Gotti because my brother used it, and when I
called anyone and said, 'This is Christopher Lorenzo,' nobody knew who
I was," he said. "To tell you the truth, I was never that into it."