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Keller @ Large: Bulger Claims He Can't Get A Fair Trial, Really?

BOSTON (CBS) - It wasn't enough for Whitey Bulger to spend the better part of five decades flooding this city with drugs, terrorizing its people, corrupting the local FBI and digging shallow graves.

Now he has to add insult to devastating injury by claiming he can't get a fair trial here.

"The jury pool has surely been tainted by the flood of publicity about this case over the last 25 years,'' his attorney writes in documents filed in US District Court.

Really? Just from following media coverage of the reaction to Whitey's arrest, it seems there are plenty of locals quite ready to hear his side of the story.

Whitey was a charming guy, you hear them saying on the radio and TV, and he did good things for a lot of people. He liked animals, we're told. And don't forget all the local widows whose rescue he came to with cash or gift turkeys at holiday time back in the good old days, before the souls of all the bodies he left to rot in those shallow graves started clamoring too loudly for justice.

And Whitey's taxpayer-funded legal team can always call as a character witness Lindsey Cyr, the old girlfriend he once had a child with, who was on public TV last night recalling the happy days with Whitey and channeling some of his contempt for his victims, suggesting at one point that some of them brought it on themselves because they enjoyed the largess of Bulger and his fellow thugs.

Just because I find such comments physically revolting, doesn't mean others will.

Keller @ Large: Bulger and a Fair Trial

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And when I read that Bulger fears his constitutional rights may be violated, I have to laugh. Since when did Whitey Bulger care about anyone's rights?

The truth is, contrary to the defense spin, there is no place in the world where Whitey can get a fairer trial then here. That is, if you believe, as defense lawyers often do not, that a truly fair trial will lead to justice being done.

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