MIAMI, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- A Florida judge has removed herself from the trial of a former FBI agent charged with conspiring with Boston mobsters to kill a potential informant.
A lawyer for John Connolly Jr. asked Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Barbara Areces to recuse herself after she made changes in the court transcript of the hearing, The Boston Globe reported. Areces said she edited the transcript because it did not agree with an audio recording.
Areces signed a recusal order Friday. Lawyer Manuel Casabielle said he did not believe the judge intentionally did anything wrong but suggested her procedure was improper.
The move is likely to delay Connolly's trial, now scheduled for March 17.
Connolly is already serving a 10-year sentence for racketeering. In one of the biggest scandals ever in the FBI, he was found to have conspired for years to protect James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, two of Boston's most notorious mobsters, who provided him with information on other criminals. In the Florida case, Connolly allegedly warned Bulger and Flemmi that a Boston businessman might implicate them in an earlier killing if the FBI found him.
