Bulger jury seeks clarity on charges

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) - Jurors in the murder and racketeering trial of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger asked the judge on Monday whether or not they could find him guilty of a crime because they believed one of his associates had committed it.

The question came in a note from the jury on its fifth day of deliberations over the sweeping 32 counts against the 83-year-old former mob boss of the "Winter Hill" gang in the 1970s and '80s.

The note said they were having trouble reaching unanimous votes on some of the charges under the racketeering count. The racketeering count encompasses 38 criminal acts -- including 19 murders Bulger is accused of ordering or committing.

The jury only needs to find Bulger guilty of committing two of those 38 crimes, which also include extortion, drug dealing and money laundering, for him to be guilty of racketeering.

U.S. District Judge Denise Casper told the 12 members of the jury that they could not find Bulger guilty of a crime if they believed one of his associates committed it but said he could be guilty of killing a victim who did not die by his hand.

It was the first question the jury had asked of the judge since Thursday in a trial entering its 10th week.

Bulger has pleaded not guilty to all charges, although his lawyers have acknowledged that their client was a drug dealer, extortionist and loan shark, in short an "organized criminal."

Family members of Bulger's victims have long waited for verdicts on the killings, and about a half-dozen survivors have been a regular presence in the courtroom.

Bulger sat quietly in court dressed in a gray shirt, dark pants and white sneakers. He declined to testify on his own behalf and called the trial a "sham."

The case of the man whose story inspired Martin Scorsese's 2006 Academy Award-winning film "The Departed" has brought back memories of a bygone era of Boston history when machine-gun toting mobsters killed rivals in telephone booths and basements and pulled the teeth from their victims' skulls before burying them in shallow graves.

It also highlighted a black mark on the history of the FBI. Agents who shared Bulger's Irish ethnicity turned a blind eye to his reign of terror in exchange for information they could use against the Italian-America Mafia, which at the time was a top national target of the FBI.

Bulger fled Boston in 1994 after a tip that his arrest was imminent and he eluded capture until 2011, when FBI agents found him hiding out in an apartment in Santa Monica, California, with a stockpile of guns and more than $800,000 in cash.

He agreed to forfeit the cash and guns, but according to court papers filed on Monday he will be allowed to keep a Stanley Cup ring given to him by an associate, who was not identified.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Grant McCool)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bostons-whitey-bulger-jury-enters-fifth-day-deliberations-135513155.html

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