By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The witnesses in the case against a retired FBI agent are so old and ill that prosecutors are taking the unusual step of trying to preserve the testimony in depositions in the event that something happens to the people now in their 80s.
The case involves Robert Fitzpatrick, a retired FBI agent accused of lying under oath during the James “Whitey” Bulger trial in 2013, the Boston Globe reports.
“There’s a compelling need to depose these witnesses, sooner rather than later,” Assistant US Attorney Zachary Hafer argued at a hearing in federal court in Boston on Wednesday.
Prosecutors charged Fitzpatrick, who was second in command of the FBI’s Boston office in the 1980s, with lying under oath for allegedly fabricating testimony about his involvement with Bulger and his role in cleaning up corruption from the office.
