Readers will recall the murder of Whitey Bulger a few weeks ago. As I predicted, this is going to end up in the courts - as it probably should.
Mr. Brennan says he is preparing to sue the government on behalf of Bulger’s estate for wrongful death and negligence to find out why authorities sent the frail, notorious gangster to the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, and put him in with the general population.
"It’s important for the family and the public to know why the prisons decided to wheel an 89-year-old man with a history of heart attacks into one of the most dangerous prisons in the country," said Mr. Brennan, who hasn’t publicly disclosed his final conversations with Bulger previously.
. . .
A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson said that Bulger was transferred from the Florida prison because of a threat he made against a staff member, an allegation Mr. Brennan disputes, and that the transfer to Hazelton was made in accordance with the bureau’s policy. The spokesperson declined to comment on any medical issues or the threat of a lawsuit. The Bureau previously said that it had sent a team of experts to the Hazelton complex “to assess operational activities and correctional security practices and measures to determine any relevant facts that may have contributed to the incident."
There's more at the link (which may disappear behind a paywall: if it does, see this report instead).
As most readers know, I served as a chaplain with the Bureau of Prisons in the early 2000's, until a disabling injury put paid to my career there. I know how the BOP "system" works - and it clearly didn't work in the case of Whitey Bulger. I'm not in a position to say whether there was official connivance in the events leading up to his death . . . but there were so many errors made in his case that one can't help but wonder. The whole situation stinks to high heaven.
I'm sure there'll be civil litigation over Mr. Bulger's death, and I won't be surprised if criminal charges are laid - unless someone senior enough decides to cover up the whole mess. That's not beyond the bounds of possibility, either. Some bureaucrats would rather settle a court case and pay humongous sums in damages (using taxpayer money, not their own), rather than expose internal shenanigans to the light of judicial cross-examination.
Peter
8 comments:
Yep. The WSJ article is paywalled, & the Fox News article keeps giving me 'Access Denied'.
Been there, done that, and you know how it works with those who maintain.
That fucking asshole made himself so unpleasant that even those who maintain gave him up to the ones that sit atop the volcano. I suspect that asshole was insufferable even as a prisoner and the one lot gave him away gratis.
You typically eat what you order. That guy? He ordered Romaine all the time.
He deserved a death penalty that should have been carried out decades ago.
no cards, no letters, no sympathy,
wow, the rabbit got loose and was biting the innocent school children
and those who maintain. I'm going to think about it and blog another time.
Defiant, I didnt understand half that, but I do understand your lack of sympathy. My concern was, who was his death going to protect, who benefited? Comey?
Oh, and we get spat at, punched, kicked and bitten regularly by some of our more colorful patients. Surly behavior is routine; should not have caused hardened prison staff to clutch their pearls and insist on his removal.
It will be interesting to find out the truth about both sides of the story. I am quite willing to believe that Bolger was an extremely rude, self-centered inmate with still way too much access to powerful 'friends' who could make the employees' lives a living hell, or worse.
Just as it may be that the current prison employees in Florida may have just tired of his antics, or even worse, someone was bought to transfer him just so he could be accessed by new inmates.
The way this is shaping up, we'll find out all the truths in about 5-10 years, unless we get paroled...
Robert Gibson, try Outline for pay-walled items.
It handles most (but not all) of those blocked pieces. It's the only one I've found that handles WSJ articles.
Go here: https://outline.com/6vqVPA
Given that Bulger's brother was president of the MA senate (and also chairman of the Univ. of Mass. college system, and the entire Boston FBI office was handcuffed and arrested after Bulger's warrant was served, I can see where he might have had some residual power.
I grew up on the edge of all that, but thankfully as an innocent. Howie Long, the NFL player who is a commentator now? His dad was a mid-level legbreaker who sent his son to cow college rather than have junior follow in his footsteps. Whitey liked him. I think there's too much overthinking here, however. Bulger was a massively expensive ballbuster who made everyone miserable, but he still had to get PC, so every time he left his room it was to the sound of a cash register bell. Pawning his nasty old ass off to another Club Fed would represent big savings to whoever got saddled with his unsavory ass. End of the day, the Dept of Corrections got tired of playing Hot Potato, and one of the many, many guineas he pissed off did for him as a result. They ought to give the guy his own line of Marinara Sauce as a reward, like the governor of RI who went to jail rather than squeal a few years ago.
My guess is that Bulger was silenced because he knew too much about the FBI's operations in Boston. And, with Mueller running his little operation against Trump, they don't dare risk something from his past coming out. Mueller was the guy who knowingly signed off on keeping four innocent men in prison to protect Bulger from charges of murder, soooo... Do the math.
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