The scion of New York’s most famous Mafia family went on trial yesterday after the judge quelled a rebellion by seven jurors who wanted to be excused from the case.

John Gotti Jr, who is accused of taking over the Gambino crime family from his father, is charged with racketeering and ordering gangland killings from 1983 to 2008.

It took prosecutors four trials to convict the elder John Gotti as the God-father of the American Mafia, earning him a reputation as “the Teflon Don”.

Mr Gotti Jr, 45, known as Junior, is on trial for the fourth time in five years — after avoiding conviction three times, just like his father.

Mr Gotti admits that he took over the Gambino family when his father went to prison in 1992. The younger Gotti served six years in prison on Mob-related charges in 1999. But prosecutors allege that he continued to run the crime family from behind bars.

Junior insists, however, that he retired from the Mafia in 1999, and that the five-year statute of limitations now protects him. Three previous prosecutions in recent years have ended in mistrials with a hung jury. At the last trial in 2006, the jury split with eight jurors believing that he had not quit the Mob and the other four saying he had.

Some prospective jurors were nervous about hearing the case against the alleged Mafia chieftain. One said friends had warned him that he could face retaliation for a guilty verdict. “Forget it — you’ll get a bullet in the head,” the prospective juror said, before being dismissed by the judge.

As the trial got under way seven of the eighteen jurors and alternates surprised the judge by making a last-minute appeal to be excused from the case. Judge Kevin Castel swore them in anyway, without asking why they wanted out.

This time around prosecutors have added some new charges and promise to bring new witnesses and new evidence. In opening arguments Elie Honig, the federal prosecutor, told the jury that Mr Gotti Jr had left behind a trail of victims in his wake.

The prosecutor called Mr Gotti a “professional criminal” who had “threatened, extorted, robbed, beaten, kidnapped, stabbed, shot and killed. Killed with his own hand and ordered others to kill for him.”

Mr Gotti Jr stands accused of a racketeering conspiracy that includes drug dealing, extortion, bribery, loan sharking and two counts of conspiracy to murder two drug dealers — George Grosso and Bruce Gotterup.

The star prosecution witness will be John Alite, a former Mob captain and Junior’s one-time friend.

Testifying in February in another Mafia trial, Alite said that Junior ordered the killing of the gangster Louis DiBono in the underground car park of the World Trade Centre in 1990. “This was his first job as a captain to kill somebody and he wanted to do it right,” Alite said.

Mr Gotti’s defence team accuse the prosecution of pursuing a vendetta against their client.

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