Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/whitey-bulgers-family-lacki.html
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No one should beaten to death in prison.
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It may very well be that James “Whitey” Bulger was “allowed” to be murdered in prison by Federal prison authorities. No matter what his crimes, that should be investigated.
But then, there are a lot of things prison and police authorities “allow” that have gotten people, probably some innocent people, killed.
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No. But it does seems to happen from time to time. The guy that killed Jeffery Dahmer somehow was left unsupervised with a guy holding a 20 inch iron bar for half an hour or something unsupervised. It’s not the place of the prison system to cull their population, much as I can’t shed a tear for Dahmer.
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Agreed. As much as I wish the worst for pieces of shit like him I’d rather let him have his peaceful death if it helps steer our already careening penal system even slightly away from the cliff edge.
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‘Captain Obvious’ speaking; the penal system, like all US systems, is broken.
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According to a certain subset of the internet the real reason Whitey Bulger was killed was because he was about to share damaging information about Robert Mueller. (Yes, the theory is both entirely baseless and incredibly stupid.)
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How the hell would he even have access to any pertinent info?
He’d been locked up for the last 6 years. The willful stupidity just amazes me sometimes…
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“It’s important for the family and the public to know why the prisons decided to wheel an 89-year-old man with a history of heart attacks into one of the most dangerous prisons in the country,”
Yeah, I wants to knows that toos.
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I think the theory was that his criminal connections and/or (nonexistent) status as a secret government witness somehow gave him information about a rape Mueller committed years ago but managed to have covered up?
Like I said, baseless and stupid. It’s one of those conspiracy theories that requires several other layers of conspiracy theories just to start making any kind of logical sense.
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Indeed. If the mob can order a hit inside a Federal prison and get away with it, that is a bad thing, regardless of how disreputable the victim is.
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Yeah - there’s complicity by the system here. You don’t put a 89 year old snitch in a wheelchair in general population.
Though as someone who once lived in Somerville where this guy operated - I’m glad the value of future earnings of an 89 year old guy who can’t be employed won’t break the bank.
Though I wouldn’t mind those responsible being fired.
edit:
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Less about the Mob ordering a hit than the Feds bouncing Bulger around from prison to prison and putting him in a particular prison situation where they knew he was likely to get killed. It’s murder by willful negligence - “Will nobody rid me of this troublesome snitch?”
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Yeah, but it bears repeating 
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I suppose they’re guessing Bulger had dirt on Mueller from when Mueller was an AUSA in Boston back in the early 80s. Given how many lethal enemies Bulger had that doesn’t strike me as very…parsimonious.
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The Globe reported in late November that Bulger had wished for a “peaceful death” in a series of letters written over the past several years to a former convict.
re: The ending…
Nobody should be murdered in prison, and it should be investigated as a matter of principle.
That said, it isn’t hard to look around and find other things to lose sleep over that are somehow more compelling than the slightly untimely end of a brutal gangster.
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My rule is that whatever treatment is acceptable for an innocent prisoner who is certain to be pardoned is the same treatment that the most unrepentant criminal should get.
This will be unpopular with those who want vengeance rather than justice, so it is difficult to make it happen.
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To paraphrase someone smarter than me: We are judged not by how we treat the best among us but how we treat the worst.
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Quoting Harry Bosch, everybody counts or nobody counts.
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