oldtime.us It's the late 1980s and low-level mobster Giacomo "Jackie Dee" DiNorscio has just been shot by his junkie cousin Tony Compagna, but refuses to press charges against him to police. Jackie soon gets arrested and is sentenced to thirty years on an unrelated drug bust. Tony, afraid of reprisals from the extended mob family run by Nick Calabrese, agrees to be a government witness for district attorney Sean Kierney, who intends to bring down dozens of organized crime figures all at once. Kierney tries to bribe Jackie to be a government witness as well, but it's not in the gregarious Jackie's nature to be a rat. That sets into motion a massive court case where Jackie, Nick and dozens of other mobsters are tried together for a countless number of crimes in front of presiding Judge Sidney Finestein. Upset with his current lawyer, who couldn't even keep him from doing a 30-year stretch, Jackie turns down an offer to be represented by lead defense attorney Ben Klandis and decides to represent himself in court, despite having no legal background or any real knowledge of how to proceed. Jackie's mischievous and vulgar manner amuses the jury on occasion but persistently irritates the judge, lawyers, witnesses and defendants, including his friends from the mob.