MIAMI, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- Lawyers in the trial of former FBI agent John Connolly began the second day of his Miami murder trial debating what evidence the jury would hear.
The Boston Globe said discussions outside the presence of the jury involved information in files from FBI informants.
Connolly, 68, is charged with murder in the 1982 mob hit that left John Callahan dead. Connolly allegedly tipped Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger that Callahan was cooperating in the investigation into an earlier mob killing.
The Miami Herald said Monday's opening statements in Miami-Dade Circuit Court included the prosecution's portrayal of Connolly as a "corrupt FBI agent" who grew up in the Boston neighborhoods where Bulger reigned supreme.
"He gave sensitive information to gangsters who used that information to protect themselves from investigation and prosecution and used that information to kill people -- and one of those people was John Callahan," prosecutor Fred Wyshak told the jury.
Connolly's attorney countered that the agent had been doing his job by cultivating Bulger as an informant, and that the conventional wisdom at the time in the Boston underworld was that the doomed Callahan was talking to police.
