Feds want Whitey Bulger's trial defense strategy
Prosecutors targeting James “Whitey” Bulger, dismissing his claim of immunity as “frivolous” and “absurd,” want a federal judge to force the accused mass-killing mobster to cough up proof of his defense game plan before his June trial spirals into an “unduly elongated and unmanageable” mess, court documents filed Friday state.
Bulger, charged with 19 murders, has claimed through his lawyer he received immunity as a federal informant in the 1970s. Prosecutors told U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns, Bulger “has failed to prove any affidavit or evidence to support the absurd notion that he entered into a legally binding agreement with” the late U.S. Attorney Jeremiah O’Sullivan “that immunized (Bulger) in perpetuity for any crime (he) chose to commit.”
Prosecutors said the 83-year-old South Boston gangster’s FBI file makes no mention of the deal Bulger intends to testify he struck with O’Sullivan in the 1970s. Bulger, they said, hasn’t even presented proof that he and O’Sullivan ever met.
“His attempt to foist this absurd notion upon the court demonstrates his disdain for the criminal justice system and society itself,” prosecutors said of Bulger.
Their filing was made in response to Bulger’s taxpayer-funded defense team’s earlier demand that Stearns compel the government to turn over “all correspondence” between their office and the New England Organized Crime Strike Force, the Department of Justice and the FBI involving Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang cronies Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, Kevin Weeks and hit man John Martorano. All three are expected to be called by prosecutors as witnesses against Bulger.
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1061175781
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