BOSTON (AP) — A federal prosecutor has rejected a claim by Massachusetts mobster James "Whitey" Bulger that the government allowed him to commit crimes because he was an FBI informant.
U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz told reporters on Tuesday that being an informant does not "immunize you from crimes."
Ortiz was responding to court documents filed Monday in which Bulger's lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., said his client should not be prosecuted in 19 murders because he had been promised immunity by a representative of the federal government for past or future crimes.
Carney said Bulger was promised immunity in the 1970s, when he was recruited by the FBI to become an informant on the rival New England Mafia.
Bulger was captured last year in Santa Monica, Calif., after 16 years on the run.
