Jury deliberations are set to continue Monday for a fifth day as those involved await a verdict in the prosecution of former mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger.
After closing arguments on August 5, four days of deliberation and nine weeks in the courtroom, the jury went home on Friday without reaching a unanimous decision regarding more than 30 racketeering charges against Bulger.
The eight men and four women have spent approximately 28 hours deciding whether the prosecution proved Bulger guilty of 19 murders, extortion and money laundering in South Boston during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite the sizeable list of charges, Judge Denise Casper has urged them to come to a consensus.
“You have a duty to attempt to reach agreement on each of the racketeering acts if you can do so conscientiously.”’ she said to the jurors on Thursday.
In total, Bulger, is charged with more than 40 counts, but Casper was speaking about one particular count of racketeering. Within that count, there are 33 acts that include the 19 murders, extortion, money laundering and conspiracy for narcotics distribution.
Casper said the jury only has to decide he was guilty of two of the acts within a 10-year period in order to convict for that particular charge. She said the jury, at the request of the prosecution, should attempt to make findings on all 33 acts if possible.
On Monday, the prosecution and defense both used more than 3 hours to argue their cases one last time before the jury would deliberate.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak cited evidence and testimony from the seven weeks the prosecution took to make their case to directly attack Bulger’s character and to prove he was guilty.
“These men didn’t hunt animals, ladies and gentlemen, they hunted people,” he said on Monday, referring to Bulger and his associates in the Winter Hill Gang. “The evidence in this trial has convincingly proven that the defendant was one of the most vicious, violent and calculating criminals to ever walk the streets of Boston.”
J.W. Carney, Bulger’s attorney, said the major witnesses in the trial — John Martorano, a confessed hit man, Kevin Weeks, Bulger’s former protégé and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, Bulger’s former right-hand man — were criminals who were paid off by the government with shorter sentences to say whatever the prosecution wanted.
“The witnesses are selling their testimony to the government,” he said. “The currency that’s used here: How much freedom is the person going to get? The currency is the power of the government to keep someone locked up in a cell, surrounded by four concrete walls topped by barbed wires.”
Flemmi is serving a life sentence instead of the death penalty in exchange for his testimony. Martorano and Weeks are free, having already completed the abbreviated sentences they received for going on the stand.
Bulger, 83, was one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted fugitives for more than a decade. He was caught in Santa Monica, Calif. in 2011 at a safe house with more than $800,000 and a stash of weapons. He fled South Boston in 1994 due to a tip from former FBI agent John Connolly.