Attorneys for accused mobster James “Whitey” Bulger said they are not prepared to defend their client during the racketeering and murder trial, CBS Boston reports.
“Simply put, the defendant’s counsel have hit a wall, and are unable to proceed further without additional time to prepare for upcoming witnesses,” Bulger’s attorneys J.W. Carney and Hank Brennan wrote in the filing Thursday. “Counsel have struggled mightily to be ready for each day of the trial since it began on June 3, 2013, working seven days a week and extraordinarily long hours.”
Much of the problem, the attorneys complained, is the prosecution’s delay in discovery.
“These discovery lapses may not be intentional, and may reflect that the prosecution team is overwhelmed as well. Nonetheless, it has put the defense team in an untenable position, especially as it continues to review earlier-produced discovery that now amounts to almost 400,000 pages. There is a physical and mental limitation on how much work can be done by the defense team, and a brief adjournment of the trial will allow counsel to be prepared for the upcoming witnesses,” Carney and Brennan wrote.
Also inconvenienced by the trial is Bulger himself, they said.
