BOSTON — District Court Judge Denise Casper was assigned yesterday to hear the federal murder case against accused mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, replacing Judge Richard Stearns, according to a court filing.
The US Court of Appeals had pulled Stearns off the case a day earlier, saying his history as a federal prosecutor in Boston created the appearance that he could not be impartial in hearing the case.
Now 83, Bulger is facing trial on charges that he committed or ordered 19 murders in the 1970s and ’80s. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Bulger’s lawyers had asked for Stearns to be removed from the case since he worked in the US Attorney’s Office in Boston in the 1980s, when the government was building its case against Bulger.
Stearns had recently ruled that he would not let Bulger’s attorneys argue in front of a jury that their client had been granted immunity from prosecution by a former federal prosecutor, and signaled that he took a dim view of the claim.
Bulger’s trial is scheduled to begin in June.
Bulger was busted in 2011 after 16 years on the run after he fled Boston on a tip from a corrupt FBI agent that an arrest was imminent.