The judge in the trial of former Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger, faced with a series of questions from jurors deliberating his fate, has told them they had a duty to try to reach a unanimous verdict on each of the dozens of murder and racketeering charges.
The jury in Boston federal court is weighing charges that could send the gangster to prison for the rest of his life. Bulger (83), nicknamed “Whitey” because of the shock of blond hair he once had, pleaded not guilty to all charges, although his lawyers acknowledged he was a drug dealer, extortionist, loan shark and “organised criminal”.
Bulger was charged with 32 criminal counts, with one – racketeering – containing 38 criminal acts, including 19 murders he is said to have carried out or ordered as head of the Winter Hill gang in 1970s and 80s. Jurors began deliberations on Tuesday after eight weeks of testimony.
On Wednesday, after a series of questions about whether the 12 jurors must agree on all the racketeering acts to find Bulger guilty, Judge Denise Casper said they need only find that he committed two of the 38 acts over a decade to be guilty of the racketeering count. She amended that guidance yesterday after prosecution lawyers suggested that the families of Bulger’s victims were worried the jury would fail to reach a decision on some of the murders.
“I remind you that you have a duty to attempt to reach agreement on each of the counts and on each of the racketeering acts, if you can do so conscientiously,” Judge Casper told the jurors before releasing them into their third day of deliberations.
Bulger’s lawyers had argued that he was not responsible for the deaths of two women among his alleged victims, saying that his partner, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, not Bulger, killed Flemmi’s girlfriend and stepdaughter.
The trial included testimony from former hit men, FBI agents, drug dealers and other witnesses who described brazen killings, massive drug and weapons heists and harrowing extortion encounters.
During the years that Bulger ruled Boston’s underworld, corrupt FBI agents who shared his Irish ethnicity turned a blind eye to his crimes in exchange for information they could use against the Italian Mafia, then a top target of the bureau nationwide, prosecutors said.
Bulger’s attorneys deny their client was ever an informant, contending that he paid agents for tips but never offered any of his own.
The gang boss fled Boston after a 1994 tip that arrest was imminent and spent 16 years on the run.
FBI agents caught up with him in June 2011, living in Santa Monica, California, with a stash of guns, more than $800,000 in cash and his girlfriend Catherine Greig – a former dental technician who, in the gang’s heyday, had supplied pliers they used to pull teeth from their mouths. – (Reuters)