In a filing to the court by Bulger's attorney Peter Krupp, the attorney accuses the prosecution of "shopping" for judges. The documents asks for the racketeering charges be consolidated with the murder charges. This would keep the case on the current judges docket, Judge Wolf. Judge wolf was part of many hearings back in the 90's concerning Bulger and the corruption of the FBI. If the prosecution is successful in having the charges dropped, the case would move to Judge Richard Stearns. Krupp wrote in the filing that the prosecution is intentionally trying to get Wolf removed.
This is turning into quite a mess of a trial already. I'm sure this kind of judge shopping happens more often than we know. So why is this so important? Wolf has history and not good history with the feds. He was part of the corruption cases and the Connolly corruption case specifically. Attorney Ortiz is probably looking to get as much of an edge as possible to close any attempt at Bulger beating the charges. Is that prudent planning? Absolutely. If I was lead prosecution on a very high profile case, I would look for any edge possible. Does it make it right? Heck no! Regardless of what you think of Whitey Bulger, he is entitled to have a fair trial. When the law starts to play games with moving around judges, that's no better than witness tampering by the accused.
I say wrap them all together and let's see how it falls. The odds say that the prosecution is going to get something to stick and Bulger will finish out the rest of his remaining life behind bars. If you can't get one of 19 murder charges to stick, you shouldn't be an attorney. Sorry, just a fact. I know of no defense team that good to get anyone off of 19 murder charges. Trust the system and for once let's see if justice does prevail.
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