Florida voted 2-1 to void his conviction today. Still many hurdles ahead though.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05...t99H/story.html

Fuck him. Dirty cops are as bad as wiseguys who rat. If you're gonna be a crook, then be a fuckin crook. But if you're gonna be a cop, then your job is to protect and serve .

What is crazy is he could possibly get out now pending an appeal from the prosecution. He was serving 10 for racketeering and that is done. Florida really fucked this one up!

That's like saying the sun came up this morning.

Now I love Florida, and I live there part-time. But they don't call it Flori-duh for nothing.

If somebody ever doubted whether he was guilty, what happened now certainly shows he IS. Had he been innocent, they wouldn't have bothered with overturning the conviction on technicalities, while it becomes perfectly logical since he is a crook with connections. I hate it when people say "respect the verdicts", because I always think about cases like this.

I thought I seen it on the bottom of the tv . Florida rail roaded him crook or not. the limitations were up and they didn't care just another black eye for the Boston FBI. they brought it down there cause its such a mess up here. just wait till they let go that the marathon bombers brother was a ci or they tried to recruit him which is crazy or that kid the murder down there at his house. so john getting out wonder if he goes into the sunset or press rows. I think he got his pension. can't wait for that Bulger doc to come out with him narrating it.

Hopefully, a family member of one of Whitey's victims will put a bullet in his head. Then get off on a technicality.

Yea I will agree they railroaded him with "upgrading" the charges to using a weapon when they knew for a fact he did no such thing. Now it will cost them a HUGE case in the public view and a HUGE case in Boston. And PB you are right with the Flori-duh comment. I have some good friends from Florida but know some bonafied idiots too. When I was living and working in Ft. Pierce I met many idiots for sure. Damn sure don't miss all that sand, was a bitch setting poles in it!

I think Connolly will try to cash in on the Whitey train. He and his family has to be broke by now.

And Fort Pierce is coastal, where the people tend to walk upright. Good thing you didn't have to work inland.

We mainly worked in Port St. Lucie, Vero Beach and had to change a few poles out in White City/Ft. Pierce.

What sucked was the salt spray, that shit eats through EVERYTHING on the pole and I mean EVERYTHING! Makes your ass pucker when we are moving a hot copper phase that is eat up with salt and as brittle as a 98 year old granny with osteoporosis!

PB, I recently bought a new car at the Arrigo Dodge in Fort Pierce. I like the smaller towns as well, its a lot quieter and goes at slower pace than what we are used to in Palm Beach. I agree the areas inland are a little backwards to say the least and the panhandle forget about it.

Dixie,

The salt and sun down here takes the paint off cars and rusts everything metal outdoors quickly. I went through a couple sets of lawn furniture before I wised up and bought an aluminum set. Were you working down her after the hurricanes in 2004?

Is that the dickhead from the departed? The Sullivan bloke?

Nah I didn't get to go as I was a local utility man back then and when you are with a utility you get put on a rotation on storm work unless it hits your territory and my turn wasn't up so I didn't get to go. When I was in FP it was around 2001, not long after 9/11. Now I'm back on the contractor side so I can travel and work when I want ;-) No more missing storms for me now.




Yes the cop in The Departed was "based" off of Connolly. Connolly didn't get his hands as dirty as Sullivan in the movie, but he gave Whitey a TON of info that got quite a few people killed.

Crap I meant to quote the whole post and somehow deleted half of it.

Yes the salt spray is horrible for any linemen in Florida. It makes a fairly easy job of say transferring 3-phase from an old pole to a new one very dangerous. Old copper lines get brittle without the salt spray, but with it the job becomes 10x more dangerous. Sometimes just shaking the line can cause it to break because it's so brittle and it's impossible to move a phase without it shaking. It also eats away all the material (steel arms, dead end shoes, etc.) on the pole as well and will eat the pole ground up and make the ground worthless. Trust me, you don't want a phase breaking in your possession either

Here is what happens when you "break the load": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX5TIDLvMyw

So when the power company wants to have an outage now you know why. It makes everything totally safe when it's dead.

This fuckin stinks , he helps the mob murder in exchange for info and he walks free , next carracappa and eppolito will be walking free . Devecchio is the same , how he isn't in jail is beyond me

Dom he didn't quite "walk free" as he has been in prison for a while now and I agree he should stay there for life, but the state screwed up big time here. Even the circuit judge told them that their chances of making this stick was weak due to them charging him with 2nd degree murder with a weapon. It was well proven he was in Boston at the time and of course he didn't pull the trigger. At the time all they could get him with was some kind of murder charge (weaker than 2nd degree because he didn't use a weapon).

Instead the state of Florida "upgraded" his charges to 2nd degree with a weapon. The prosecutors knew this wasn't right yet they still went ahead with it. Stupid stupid stupid.

They still have to get through the appeal by the prosecutors as well though so he isn't out yet.

Dom,

Carracoppa and Eppilito exausted all their appeals so I don't think they have any chance of getting out, but you never know.

It wouldn't surprise me if there is some technicality they have overlooked and they walk out as heroes , the Feds and cops r just as bad as the mob in some instances

They're never getting out. They should be buried UNDER the fucking jail.

The only thing worse than a criminal is a dirty cop.

Article with court decision link

MIAMI (CBS/AP) — A divided appeals court on Wednesday threw out the murder conviction and lengthy prison sentence for a former FBI agent in the decades-old mob-style killing of a gambling executive, one of numerous slayings linked to jailed Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.

Florida’s 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled 2-1 that former agent John Connolly was improperly convicted and sentenced to 40 years for his role in the 1982 slaying of World Jai-Alai President John Callahan. But further appeals are possible, so Connolly, 73, remains in prison for now.

A hit man testified in the 2008 trial that he fatally shot Callahan after Connolly tipped Bulger and his lieutenant, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, that the executive would implicate them in another death. The appeals court initially upheld Connolly’s conviction in 2011 without comment but overturned it after Connolly’s lawyer asked for reconsideration.

Mary Callahan is Callahan’s widow. She tells WBZ she is not concerned that Connolly will one day walk the streets.

“He’s not going anywhere,” she says.

Callahan says she empathizes with the Connolly wife and children since she knows firsthand what it’s like for a family to lose a father and a husband. But she points out the Connollys may get their family member back and she never will. Still, she’s confident that prosecutors will keep the rogue FBI agent locked up.

“I’m not angry because I know that they’ll do something,” she says. “Something will happen. He’s not going to get out because he’s guilty.”

In the court’s new ruling, a panel of judges determined that Connolly’s second-degree murder conviction was barred by the statute of limitations applicable at the time. His attorneys argued that prosecutors improperly used a firearms allegation to enhance the charge to one potentially punishable by life in prison — for which the statute of limitations would not apply.


“Connolly’s conviction for second-degree murder with a firearm should not have been reclassified to a life felony in order to circumvent the statute of limitation,” wrote Chief Judge Frank A. Shepherd and Judge Richard J. Suarez in the majority opinion. “Without the fundamentally erroneous reclassification, the first-degree felony of second-degree murder was time-barred.”

Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg dissented, contending the majority was making “grave error” in overturning the conviction.

“The evidence as to both his participation in the murder and his possession of a firearm during his participation is overwhelming,” Rothenberg wrote.

Read: Florida Appeals Court Ruling .pdf

Connolly has long denied a role in Callahan’s slaying. Trial testimony showed he was 1,500 miles away in Massachusetts when Callahan was killed by Bulger’s hit man John Martorano, who made a deal with prosecutors in return for his testimony in Connolly’s case and others. The only evidence that Connolly might have had a firearm when Callahan was killed is the standard FBI practice that agents are armed while on duty.

Connolly’s younger brother, James Connolly, said Wednesday in a phone interview that he was still trying to digest the ruling but is pleased with the result.

“I think it shows that he was wrongly convicted,” he said.

The court said Connolly should be freed from prison based on the erroneous conviction, but it issued a stay so prosecutors could either ask the entire 3rd District court to consider the case or take it to the Florida Supreme Court. A spokesman for Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday.

Bulger, 84, was a fugitive for 16 years before his 2011 capture at an apartment in Santa Monica, California. He was convicted in August 2013 of a host of crimes in a racketeering indictment, including playing a role in 11 murders while he led a violent gang. Bulger is serving a life sentence in federal prison but is appealing.

Connolly was convicted in 2002 of racketeering for his dealings with Bulger’s gang, mainly protecting them from prosecution and tipping them about informants in their ranks. He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in that case. That sentence has been completed.

WBZ-TV’s Jim Armstrong contributed to this report.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/05/28/fl...der-conviction/