What’s highly unusual in Wyshak’s presentation of the informant issue is that he’s not using an FBI agent, which is normally done when FBI records are introduced, but a guy named James Marra who is with the Department of Justice’s office of the inspector general (OIG). One wonders why this is being done. Is the…

Has Whitey Bulger been indicted for being an infoRmAnT?  You’d think that was an issue if you sat in the court yesterday, or even the day before that or today. Whitey’s charged with racketeering with the underlying offenses being 19 murders. The prosecution proving he committed just two of them will carry the day for…

J.W. Carney goes after Prosecutor Brian Kelly calling his actions a breach of ethics. Kelly apparently suggested that if Whitey wants his voice heard he should take the stand. Carney says that is violating “a sacred privilege” of a defendant not to take the stand.  Carney makes an impassioned plea to allow him to conduct…

Looking at Charlie Raso testify without paying attention to his words on direct examination he seemed to be an innocuous and benign old man. Listening to him tell his life’s story he was all but that. Watching  him on cross-examination, not so much listening to him because he like all prosecution criminal witnesses who have…

Today we pick up where we left off last week with an evidentiary discussion. The prosecutors are trying to get into evidence an FBI teletype that went from Boston to DC. Defense objects to it because it contains hearsay information. The hearsay evidence rule says out of court statements can’t be admitted if offered to prove the…

I‘ve written about people out of favor and how the Boston Globe often identifies them and sets it columnists and writers to go after one of these POOFs. Not satisfied with dragging people through the mud unfairly it has now come up with an old world remedy, shunning. It is urging that we shun a…