Patty often throws a question at me that gets my brain back in gear. She asks what I think of a state prosecution of Bulger, Nee, and perhaps others. I’ll deal with Whitey now and Nee and the others later.
She said: Whitey’s lawyer Hank Brennan said he “and Whitey are eager to get a trial in state court on the murder charges that were not proven” in the federals case.
The state prosecutors have taken a hands off attitude toward this case up to this point. It’s even worse than that, they’ve pretended that upwards of forty murders never happened in Suffolk and Middlesex Counties, They’ve done this even though they need not have. However they could hide behind the idea that they did not want to interfere with the federal prosecution. But during the 16 years Whitey was on the lam, there was no prosecution to interfere with and they still did nothing.
My sense is that now that an election for a mayor’s job is coming up, the Suffolk DA Conley has figured this is a good way to get a little juice into his campaign. However before he goes off chasing after Whitey and some others, he should perhaps tell us why he’s done nothing up until this time. All the hoopla reminds me of other times around election time.
In the olden days there was a Suffolk DA called Garrett Byrne. He’d seem to always have a big round-up of bookies every four years just a few months before election. He was DA from 1952 until 1978; he was followed by Newman Flanagan his first assistant who served during the Whitey years, 1978 to 1992. Newman didn’t need to have round ups since he was quite outgoing and very popular.
In the more recent days, the then Norfolk DA milked a little publicity out of a tragedy. Bill Keating, now a congressman, seeing the inane media inspired uproar in 2010 over the non prosecution of Amy Bishop in Braintree for the 1986 murder of her brother figured it wouldn’t hurt his congressional campaign to jump on the bandwagon. He indicted her for murder. This was after she had been indicted in Alabama for murdering three people at the University of Alabama.
Amy entered a plea of guilty to those Alabama murders. She was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The DA who followed Keating rightly dismissed the Norfolk County murder indictment. It never should have been brought. All knew from the get go she would never be tried in Massachusetts. Her appeal of the Alabama conviction was denied yesterday
So the likelihood Conley may indict Whitey at this time remains a possibility because it is election season and visions of tons of free publicity must dance around Conley’s head at the though of doing that. Like with the Amy Bishop matter, the indictment of Whitey for the murders in Suffolk would linger on the docket and never be tried. The federals wouldn’t surrender him to the state. They plan to hold him until his soul wends its way over the prison walls.
If ever there will be an exercise in futility and a waste of taxpayer money it would be the indictment of an 84-year-old man who will have about 50 years to go to wrap up the sentence he will get after the three-day process beginning on November 13 where the families of the victims will try to outdo each other in yelling vituperations and obscenities at Whitey reminiscent of some Middle Age ritual when the condemned is paraded off in an open wagon to the gallows and the bystanders expectorate on her, or in some sense similar to the Salem witch trials a local tradition.
Give me one logical reason to waste time to indict Whitey. That is if this wasn’t campaign season.
Of course Whitey would love that to happens because the one thing Whitey wants is to stay in the area. Who wouldn’t if they knew a nice clean cell has been prepared and reserved for him in what has been described as “a cleaner version of Hell.” If you are good while you spend your time there, they may let you look upon another person after you’ve been living by yourself for 3 years. For Whitey, he’d get that chance at age 87.
Although his indictment would resurrect the name of this blog since I could pretend I was now covering his state case, I’d prefer that the federals take him to the place where he will live in casket like conditions. He was not the worst of the worst, but he was surely up there close to them. The federals know that if the are going to keep up the pretense that Whitey was the number one most wanted man in America then he should be treated thusly once convicted.
I tend not to drop a ton off responses, however after
browsing a few of the responses here Hark,Hark, The
Prosecutors Do Bark! | Matt Connolly’s Views
onn Boston, the Nation and the World. I actually do have 2 questions for you
if you don’t mind. Is it onpy me or do some
of the responses lopok like they are let by brain dead people?
😛 And, if you aare writing on other sites, I’d like to follow you.
Could you post a list of the complete urls of your public pages like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?
Okay et al.,
So I lost my mind a little. Too many women hurt or killed.
With that said, I have absolutely no idea what is best concerning another trial for Whitey.
My hair just caught on fire after going through a good part of Dance With The Devil by Peter Lance: the premise being that the NY FBI partnered up with a super horrendous guy in order to get the NY mob and let 9/11 and the events leading up to it slip through its fingers.
Firefly:
How could your hair possibly catch on fire when you know what the FBI has done in Boston and is still doing? I do want to read that book though.
Matt,
I think you all know by now that I love my city.
And I also have my loved ones who call NYC home.
Connections. What are you gonna do?
I’m thinking NY and Boston have to find a way to coincide.
Firefly:
Boston has the idea that somehow it competes with New York City. It’s like the mouse thinking she measures up to the lion. They are worlds apart in just about everything except perhaps professional sports.
Matt et al.,
Then here’s what I’m trying to grapple with: Whitey – didn’t a big drug dealer in the trial call him provincial? – is put on the FBI’s most wanted list two and a half months after ObL in 1999.
Didn’t Whitey get away in 1995?
What changed? The testimony of all these gangsters?
The stuff happening in NYC seems so, so, so, so, so much bigger than the stuff of the Boston mouse. I’m just beginning to digest Peter Lance’s Triple Cross. I had absolutely no knowledge about some of the lions roaming NYC. And one of my heroes who prosecuted Scooter Libby is seeming like he was up against far more than most anyone had ever dreamed of.
So I’m feeling like I have to see the mouse of Boston being added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List in light of the lions roaming New York who are not on the list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Ten_Most_Wanted_Fugitives,_1990s
Sorry, Everyone, if I am not making myself clear.
There’s a void somewhere.
Firefly:
Whitey was gone from January, 1995, as you suggested. The drug dealer who testified against him had businesses all over the USA so he did consider him a local problem. And he was a local problem but he was created by the FBI.
In 1997 and 1998 Judge Wolf held his hearings on motions filed by some of the gangsters. It was during those hearings that much of the shenanigans involving Whitey and the FBI were disclosed. The FBI having been complicit in Whitey’s reign of terror thought the best way to avoid embarrassment was to highlight him as a criminal so it could say: “hey look, we’re taking this guys crimes very seriously. (heh, heh)”
The FBI makes up the list and it does so to protect itself. It felt that it best it make Whitey into some type of monster criminal would cover up its dealings with him. Remember the FBI’s Most Wanted is an FBI list. What’s most important to the FBI is its reputation, nothing else. Having been in bed with Whitey for so many years it had to try to pretend it wasn’t.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Dealwi
Now, this guy brings up Whitey, but this is a whole nother enchilada.
JANET UHLAR: Musings on the trial of the century by Bulger juror #12
Read more: JANET UHLAR: Musings on the trial of the century by Bulger juror #12 – Quincy, MA – The Patriot Ledger http://www.patriotledger.com/news/cops_and_courts/x1905499796/JANET-UHLAR-Musings-on-the-trial-of-the-century-by-Bulger-juror-12#ixzz2cGQCj8Az
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial
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http://www.patriotledger.com/opinions/x1905499796/JANET-UHLAR-Musings-on-the-trial-of-the-century-by-Bulger-juror-12?zc_p=0
Matt,
I don’t think Whitey’s motivation for a state trial is because he wants to linger in solitary confinement in Plymouth. I’m convinced he only wants a trial outside of the grips of Wyshak and Kelly. Lets face reality, Wyshak and Kelly knowingly put a truckload of perjury on the witness stand in Bulger’s trial. Nobody knows the full extent of that suborned perjury better than Bulger. Wyshak and Kelly also employed a strategy of permitting their witnesses to lie for the purpose of protecting other murderers, such as Pat Nee, Jimmy Martorano, Howie Winter, Jackie and Frank Salemme… That strategy would have been obvious to Whitey during his trial, too. As to the corruption that occurred in the 70s and 80s nobody is more aware of the depth and breadth of that but Bulger. He is the man who knows too much and his ship cannot be allowed to reach any shore, especially not a state court.
I submit that Bulger’s only motivation for a state trial is to expose the current corruption in the US Attorney’s Office. Not necessarily even the corruption of the 70s and 80s, except to the extent it corroborates his deal with US Attorney. He didn’t call Pat Nee as a witness because he wanted Nee to testify, nor was it to get Nee indicted. Nee was irrelevant. He wanted to show that Wyshak and Kelly were actively protecting a principal in the Winter Hill Gang conspiracy who was a percipient witness and participant in almost half of the murder charged. Why Nee wasn’t ever charged or immunized is a question Wyshak and Kelky had kept under wraps for two decades. By putting the name on his witness list, Whitey brought that question out into the public realm. Had Whitey been allowed to present his defense, Pat Nee would be the strongest proof that the US Attorney not only has the power to gangsters from murder prosecutions, they are doing it today with Pat Nee.
Whitey wants a state trial to expose more corruption……SWMBO calls! Later.
….survived that one!
What Whitey doesn’t want a state trial for is to linger in a “special” solitary confinement cell in Plymouth having the sadistic Sheriff Ken Brady peek up his ass with a penlight 10 times a day.
Whitey does not want a state trial to put any of his guys in troubke with law enforcement either. Theres nobody alive or dead who can say he pointed the law at them. He’s not going to change that at age 84.
He also had a front row seat to observe Wyshak and Kelly slander his brother for the media daily for two months. I gather he’s more inclined to expedite his departure than bring his family more grief.
That all said, using a sate trial to bring down Wyshak and Kelly is probably a goal Whitey sees as worth keeping the heat on his family longer.
A lot of conjecture here, but that’s how I see it.
P
Chances are that the feinting to the left and then to the right might get some press until primary day but if Dan is not in the final it will be dropped.
By the way did did Newman ever win a case? Wasn’t he 0 and 15 on high profile cases?
Tough time to be female.
Stop the show trial.
End the stupid turf battles.
Continue to react with tremendous force and solidarity when an officer is threatened or shot at.
Consider the woman who lived through the strangulation attempt in a South Boston elevator.
Consider the woman who lived through a rape after getting into the wrong taxi.
Consider the young woman who grabbed a future killer’s wallet and ID before losing consciousness after surviving strangulation in Mission Hill.
Consider the young mother who reported the abuse, got a temporary restraining order and is judged responsible for preventing her subsequent murder because she didn’t come into court the day after being slammed into a mirror.
If any candidate would like good press, I might suggest putting your energy into the above.
There was no press for:
1. The young woman who grabbed the wallet before losing consciousness. The neighborhood wasn’t even warned that this had happened. But they were warned of a public urination.
http://missionhillgazette.com/2013/08/09/editorial-a-police-explanation/
2. I think the rape took place on August 6th, and we’re just getting around to being warned about it due to miscommunications over the turf war.
3. The choking in the elevator got some press because of the strangulation and stabbing of another young woman nearby.
4. Let’s just say that there was ample evidence of abuse and rage issues in the most recent stabbing of a young mother.
There’s so much more to say.
Who is best suited to handle the enormous egos involved in turf battles while young women’s throats have the audacity to continue to show up in Boston.