I’m delayed in doing this because I got caught up in answering comments then dragged off into the Syrian War. Also got delayed reading Gaga’s first chapter which “Afraid of the FBI” sent in as a comment. That gives you the feel of the neighborhood which is more authentic than the story told by people who were never there.
This week we heard the openings and four witnesses. We’ve observed the attorneys question the witnesses and interact with each other and the judge. We can come to some tentative conclusions.
Listening to the openings I felt like I was at a concert and one part of the orchestra was playing from one score and the other from a different score. There are two themes running through this trial which is a little unusual as best I can tell at this moment. The prosecutor is playing the straight forward composition that tells us about how bad Whitey is. Brian Kelly started with what I thought was an excellent opening and he laid out the case against Whitey forcefully, clearly and cleverly, starting and ending telling about Whitey the murderer.
Then Carney got up and I can only guess that he was following a script written by Whitey where he wasn’t telling us the traditional defense story that his client was innocent, but that his client was not as bad as the government would have you believe even though he was pretty good at doing illegal business. He seems to have admitted doing most of the things the government accused him of doing and he contested a few of the other things.
He told us the case was not understandable unless you realized the federal authorities were corrupt, the king of corruption was John Connolly a greedy, money-grubbing FBI agent, and he hid his corruption by falsely labeling Whitey as an informant something no self-respecting Irish guy would ever become. Whitey was never an informant but he was a major bookie, major shylock, and huge drug dealer who had his operation in South Boston and had little to do with the Mafia.
Then he told us Whitey went off and lived openly in California for 16 years and all these people who will come in and testifying against him are not to be believed because they are evil and made deals. He called Martorano a “psychopath, a soulless killer without a conscience,” and generally ripped into the others. He tried to separate Whitey from the killing of the two women and the Wheeler and Callahan murders.
That told me that the defense is really in a bind. Carney knows what evidence is coming in so he is trying somehow to mitigate the damage by admitting a lot of it but trying to put a spin on it so that Whitey doesn’t look so bad, while at the same time not wanting to undermine Whitey’s image of himself as tough, stand-up guy, or like – I got it, and to figure out how you have to read about Gaga in the comments. Whitey imagines himself as Shane. Although truth be told if he could take a look at his soul he’d have a truer look at himself if he saw that the character who played the hired gun Jack Wilson is what he is.
So he envisions himself as a good man, sort of like John Martorano who is the psychopath who also calls himself a good man, who is involved in provided consensual services, gambling and drugs to willing people. Not one who would be involved in anything brutal. He made a lot of money, paid for protection and did what he had to do to make his millions.
Whitey wants to go out singing his own song which includes forever maintaining the idea he was a tough guy who made a lot of money. That means he has to testify. That’s the best I can come up now but it seems to be the way we are headed. I’ll have more to say on it as I see it develop. I’ll post more about the first week a little later but “she who must be obeyed” is calling me to do some yard work.