A Florida state appeals court overturned the murder conviction of corrupt FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. on Wednesday, ruling that jurors relied on a flawed charge against him in the 1982 killing of a Boston businessman. 
 
 The decision raises the possibility that the 73-year-old Connolly, James “Whitey” Bulger’s longtime handler and a central figure in one of the most notorious chapters in Boston’s criminal history, could be freed. 
 
 By a 2-to-1 decision, the Miami appeals court ruled that Connolly’s conviction of second-degree murder with a firearm in 2008 should be overturned because, among other reasons, he did not carry or discharge the gun that was used to kill John Callahan in South Florida. 
 
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 The court appeared to fault prosecutors for overreaching. In their effort to win a conviction against Connolly, who had been 1,500 miles away in Boston when hit man John Martorano killed Callahan, prosecutors used a firearms charge that skirted the state’s statute of limitations. 
 
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 “It was undisputed that Martorano used his own gun to shoot Callahan and that Connolly never carried, displayed, used, or threatened to use the murder weapon,” Judge Richard J. Suarez wrote for the majority. 
 
 In 2009, Connolly was sentenced to 40 years in prison after jurors heard he had tipped off Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi that Callahan would probably tell the FBI that the Boston mobsters were involved in the 1981 murder of World Jai Alai executive Roger Wheeler in Oklahoma. 
 
 Mary Callahan, the Florida victim’s widow, reacted sarcastically to the ruling. 
 
 “It’s a good thing that somebody gets something good out of this, because we sure didn’t,” Callahan said. 
 
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 “It’s interesting that he has a chance to be free and to be back with his family. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t have that chance, and, as his family, we don’t have that chance.” 
 
 Callahan’s bullet-riddled body was discovered in the trunk of a parked car at Miami International Airport. 
 
 Callahan had persuaded Bulger to have Wheeler killed because Callahan was skimming some of the World Jai Alai profits and wanted to keep the thefts secret and possibly take over the business, Martorano testified during Bulger’s federal trial in 2013. 
 
 In Wednesday’s ruling, the appeals court judges sent Connolly’s conviction to a lower court, where it will stay “until any and all post-appeal motions are final,” according to the decision. 
 
 Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, her spokeswoman said. 
 
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 Public defender Manuel Alvarez, who is representing Connolly, said he filed an emergency request to release his client immediately, but the court denied the motion later Wednesday. 
 
 “This conviction is a nullity,” Alvarez said. “He is now 73, and we are trying get him out.’’ 
 
 A spokesman for the FBI field office in Boston declined to comment on the ruling, since the case is still pending in state court in Florida. 
 
 Manuel Casabielle, Connolly’s original defense lawyer in Florida, said he was always confident that the former agent would prevail on appeal. 
 
 “In fact, I told John right after he was sentenced not to worry because we had already won the case,” Casabielle said. “I believe he was a scapegoat for the government’s use of the top-echelon informant program that was in place for the FBI back in the ’70s and early ’80s, when John was running Bulger and Flemmi. When the negatives of that program came to light, I believe John was hung out to dry.” 
 
 That murder conviction was the second time Connolly had been found guilty of charges linked to the Bulger gang. In 2002, Connolly was sentenced to 10 years on federal racketeering charges for protecting Bulger and Flemmi, his longtime informants, while they continued a years-long criminal rampage that included dozens of murders. 
 
 Pat Donahue, another woman widowed by Bulger’s mobsters, said the ruling made her “sick to my stomach.” Her husband, Michael, was an innocent bystander who was killed by the gang as he gave a friend a ride home. 
 
 “I can’t understand the legal reasoning behind this,” Donahue said. “It was proven that John Connolly got people murdered. Now they are citing a technicality?” 
 
 Michael Von Zamft, who prosecuted Connolly in Florida, pledged to continue the legal battle to keep him in prison. 
 
 “We plan to file motions seeking a rehearing,” Von Zamft said. “Mr. Connolly presently is right where he belongs, and I guess we’ll do what we can to keep him there.” 
 
 The appellate ruling turned on the prosecution’s decision to charge Connolly with second-degree murder with a firearm, a crime that does not have a statute of limitations in Florida. Without the firearm component, the four-year statute of limitations that existed in 1982 for second-degree murders would have expired by the time Connolly was charged in 2005. 
 
 Brian Kelly, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Bulger’s corrupt relationship with the FBI and helped convict him last year, was blunt when asked what he thought of the appellate decision. 
 
 “Not much,” said Kelly, who now works in private practice at Nixon Peabody LLP. He said he would be disappointed to see Connolly walking free. 
 
 “It would be disheartening, because the evidence at Bulger’s trial, as well as at Connolly’s own trial, was found by different juries to establish that FBI corruption was one of the main reasons that the Bulger group flourished for so long with such devastating consequences to its victims.” Kelly said. 
 
 In the ruling Wednesday, Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg broke from her colleagues and said the evidence supported Connolly’s conviction. 
 
 “Contrary to the majority’s conclusions, the law does not require that the defendant be present or that he commit the last act that caused the defendant’s death,’’ she wrote. 
 
 “It cannot be disputed that the jury found that the defendant carried a firearm during the acts giving rise to his conviction for second-degree murder,” said Rothenberg, a reference to evidence that Connolly wore his service weapon when he met with Bulger, Flemmi, and Martorano in the weeks before Callahan’s murder. 
 
 “It makes no difference whether the defendant had hired . . . a hit man, turned to his mob friends to murder Callahan, or pulled the trigger himself. He is equally guilty,” Rothenberg wrote. 
 
 Steve Davis, 56, of Milton, whose sister Debra was allegedly strangled by Bulger in 1981, assailed the ruling in a phone interview. 
 
 “This whole thing’s been upsetting since the early ’80s when my sister went missing,” said Davis, who was enraged last summer when the Bulger jury returned a “no finding” ruling on his sister’s death. 
 
 “You think it gets better, but it just keeps getting worse. You’re dealing with a government that just doesn’t care.” 
 
 He added of Connolly’s sentence: “Forty years wasn’t enough. There are people getting more time in there for lesser crimes.” 
 
 Peter Mullane, a Cambridge lawyer who represented Connolly in Massachusetts, hailed the appellate ruling. 
 
 “It was a welcome decision, partly for the family and their prospect of finally getting reunited, as they should have been,” Mullane said. “And it was a refreshing decision to read where the court applied the facts to the law, and it was justice finally done.” 
 
 In the seven-week trial, Flemmi testified that Connolly, a decorated FBI agent, took $235,000 in payoffs from him and Bulger and routinely provided them with information, including tips that prompted them to kill Callahan and two FBI informants. 
 
 Related coverage 
 
 Travis Andersen. Kevin Cullen, and Martin Finucane of the Globe staff contributed. MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com ; Ellement at john.ellement 
 
 @globe.com ||||| In the history of the FBI, there have likely been few special agents as unimaginative in their corruption as John Morris. As supervisor of the bureau’s organized-crime squad in Boston from 1976 to 1983, and later part of a local organized-crime task force, Morris accepted from gangsters $7,000 in bribes, bottles of wine, a silver-plated wine bucket, and airfare for his secretary, who also happened to be his mistress. Morris took these gratuities from the very men he was empowered to investigate, mobsters James “Whitey” Bulger and his partner Steve “the Rifleman” Flemmi. 
 
 On the witness stand Thursday and Friday, at the Moakley Federal Courthouse on the South Boston waterfront, Morris, age 67, wants you to know that this weighed heavily on his mind. As a key witness in the ongoing trial of the infamous Whitey Bulger, who faces 32 criminal counts, including racketeering charges and 19 counts of murder, Morris came across as remarkably bland. He has a tight little mouth and beady eyes. His complexion somewhat rosy from his retirement years as a “wine educator,” Morris is soft-spoken and hollow, the face of corruption as white bread and Velveeta cheese. 
 
 “I don’t know why I did it,” said Morris from the stand. “I had given over all my power and authority at this point to John Connolly.” 
 
 John J. Connolly was Morris’s subordinate, a hotshot special agent in the FBI’s organized-crime squad with vast contacts in Boston, both in the underworld and in the legitimate world of politics and business. It was Connolly who, starting in 1975, had enlisted Bulger as a source of underworld information. To Connolly and Morris, Bulger was a TE, or top-echelon informant, the highest designation in the Bureau for a snitch. Having a TE under your jurisdiction was a major feather in the cap of any agent, the kind of accomplishment that could lead to commendations from headquarters, financial rewards, and promotions within the ranks of what J. Edgar Hoover once called “the sacred trust.” 
 
 The government’s case against Bulger is based partly on his role as an FBI informant, particularly how he used his connections with law enforcement to engage in an underworld version of insider trading. Bulger received information from Morris and Connolly about investigations conducted by other law-enforcement agencies into his criminal activities. The agents tipped him off about potential informants in his organization. Bulger allegedly used that information to murder said informants before they could do him any harm. Incredibly, in 1983, Morris and Connolly even allowed Bulger and Flemmi to listen to highly confidential Title III recordings from a bug they had placed in the main headquarters of the Mafia in Boston. They did so over wine in a celebratory fashion in a room at the Colonnade Hotel, where Morris got so drunk he needed to have one of the gangsters drive him home. 
 
 From the stand, Morris related how he and Connolly often engaged in “puffery” in memos that exaggerated Bugler’s value as an informant, how they routinely took information given to them by other informants—including Flemmi—and put it in Whitey’s file. Even worse, they knowingly allowed Bulger to plant disinformation into FBI files, through memos they signed off on, about crimes his gang had committed, effectively derailing the likelihood of Bulger being investigated and prosecuted for innumerable horrendous acts, including murder. 
 
 “You knew this information was false,” said Fred Wyshak, the lead prosecutor, of one such memo. 
 
 “I did,” said the former agent. 
 
 Over time, as Morris told it in direct testimony elicited by Wyshak, other agents from his squad were introduced to Bulger and Flemmi. They shared drinks and dinners cooked by Morris in his own home. Nicholas Gianturco, James Ring, and other agents received cash and gifts from the gangsters. Before long, the entire organized-crime squad in Boston had been, to use Morris’s word, “compromised” by Bulger and Flemmi. 
 
 Morris sought to appear contrite and even sympathetic as he described how he presided over one of the most venal and corrupt investigative squads in FBI history, all while he was being touted in internal performance-evaluation memos as “consistently excellent … a highly motivated and capable supervisor … Exceptional.” Morris was cited and praised for being “directly involved in the development of one of the bureau’s most valuable top echelon informants”—meaning Bulger. 
 
 Morris knew it was all a lie. “I knew I was completely trapped,” he said from the stand. “I was in so far I could never get out of it. I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful.” 
 
 In 1988, Morris sought to do something about it. He’d been contacted by Gerard O’Neill, a reporter for The Boston Globe, who was part of a team of reporters who were preparing a series of articles on what the Globe called “the Bulger mystique.” O’Neill was looking for confirmation on something he’d heard from contacts in law enforcement. He asked Morris, “Is Jim Bulger an informant for the FBI?” Morris stalled, but eventually, after receiving assurances form O’Neill he would not be identified as a source, Morris leaked the fact that Whitey was a rat. 
 
 “Why did you do that?” asked Wyshak. 
 
 “I did it so that what happened to me wouldn’t happen to other agents,” answered Morris. 
 
 Bulger, of course, had a different view. When the Globe article appeared with the allegation the he had a “special relationship” with the FBI, Whitey believed that Morris was trying to get him arrested or even killed. 
 
 In one of the most dramatic revelations in his testimony, Morris related how, following the article’s appearance in print, he received a call from Whitey, who told him, “with your devious and Machiavellian ways,” that Morris better get the Globe to retract its article. He also told Morris, “You took money from me. If I go to jail, you’re coming with me.” 
 
 Following Bulger’s call, Morris started having heart palpitations. He admitted himself for testing and, while in the hospital, went into full cardiac arrest. Bulger’s phone call had given him a heart attack. 
 
 All these years later, Bulger still holds a special animus for Morris. Though he had been mostly quiet through the three weeks of the trial up to this point, during Morris’s testimony Whitey mumbled under his breath, “You’re a fucking liar.” Not everyone in the courtroom heard it, and it is not clear whether or not anyone on the jury caught the remark. 
 
 Moments later, after the jury and Morris had been removed for a break, co-prosecutor Brian T. Kelly stood and demanded of Judge Denise J. Casper that the defendant be admonished. “I know he spent his whole life intimidating people,” said Kelly, “including 15-year-old boys in Southie, but he shouldn’t be allowed to do it here.” 
 
 The judge indicated that she had not heard the remark, but cautioned Bulger that he should let his lawyers do his speaking for him. 
 
 “Do you understand?” she asked 
 
 “Yes,” said Bulger. 
 
 It was a major aspect of Morris’s testimony—and of the government’s case in general—that the FBI had been driven by an overweening desire to makes cases against what they referred to as LCN, or La Cosa Nostra. Morris and Connolly consistently overstated Bulger’s role as a source of information on LCN, with Morris, on the stand all these years later, still suggesting that it may have been Bulger that drew a sketch map of the interior headquarters of Jerry Anguilo, boss of the Boston Mafia, when all indications are that it was Steve Flemmi. Eventually, in 1986, the feds were successful in prosecuting Anguilo and two of his brothers in a major Mafia prosecution, which became the justification for more corruption and coddling of Bulger and his gang. 
 
 The real reason the FBI may have been engaged in an elaborate scheme to protect Bulger and Flemmi goes much deeper and has only been hinted at in Morris’s testimony so far. 
 
 In cross-examination by attorney Henry Brennan, Bulger’s co-counsel, Morris mentioned the name of Dennis Condon, a veteran FBI agent who Morris described as his “friend and mentor.” As had been established by various witnesses earlier in the trial, Condon was a veteran agent who, back in the 1960s, had been the partner of a notoriously corrupt special agent named H. Paul Rico. In 2006, Rico died of natural causes while facing murder charges for his role in one of the killings of which Bulger now stands accused. 
 
 Together, Condon and Rico recruited and supervised the FBI’s first major top-echelon informant, a murderous East Boston gangster named Joseph Barboza. A notoriously violent hitman who had killed nearly 20 people, Barboza, much like Bulger after him, allegedly fed the FBI information about the Mafia, in his case Raymond Patriarca, boss of all of New England. In exchange, the feds protected Barboza. But they went even further. In the early 1960s, while an FBI informant, Barboza and two other assailants—including Steve Flemmi’s brother, Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi—murdered a small-time gangster named Teddy Deegan. The FBI knew Barboza had been involved in this murder; they even had his voice on a wiretap asking for and receiving permission from Raymond Patriarca to carry out the hit. Not only did the FBI not pursue prosecution of Barboza, but it knowingly let him take the stand at the Deegan murder trial and finger four innocent men for the crime. Largely on the testimony of Barboza, those four men were convicted and sent off to prison for life. 
 
 At the time, many throughout the criminal-justice system—cops, agents, prosecutors, and even judges—knew or suspected that something unspeakably nefarious had taken place at the Deegan murder trial. It became local legend, a conspiracy of corruption and silence in which many people in subsequent decades became witting or unwitting co-conspirators. 
 
 The Barboza saga and the framing of innocent people has been a subnarrative running through the Bulger trial, and for good reason. Morris and Connolly were the inheritors of a strategy first devised by Dennis Condon and Paul Rico, an “ends justifies the means” approach that begins with small acts of malfeasance, like receiving money and bottles of wine from gangsters, and metastasizes with agents covering up for murders and even playing a conspiratorial role in all manner of gangland slaughter. 
 
 Many people in the Boston criminal-justice system have blood on their hands, not the least of whom is John Morris. 
 
 By the late 1980s, two of the four men convicted of the Deegan murder had died in prison. The two remaining men—Peter Limone and Joseph Salvati—were being considered for commutation of their sentence; they had now served more than 30 years in prison. There had always been rumors that they were framed, and the state parole board was willing to take a look at their case. 
 
 Enter Morris and Connolly. As a favor to Dennis Condon and Paul Rico, who had endorsed Barboza’s criminal act of perjury and covered for his continued underworld crimes (until Barboza was eventually murdered in California in 1976), Morris and Connolly paid a visit to members of the state parole board and attempted to bully and intimidate them into not approving commutation for Limone and Salvati. 
 
 “We recommended against commutation,” is how Morris put it, claiming under questioning that he remembered nothing else about his efforts in this regard. 
 
 The prosecution objected to Brennan’s line of questioning, with Wyshak alleging, as he has numerous times in this trial, “the Limone matter has nothing to do with this case.” The judge and the lawyers broke for a sidebar, outside the purview of the jury, the media, and the public. When they returned, she noted that she would allow Brennan’s question but would be “paying close attention” to his efforts to inject the framing of Limone and others into the Bulger case—suggesting, perhaps, that the framing of innocent people, and the government’s complicity in it, is a matter that still needs to be covered up. 
 
 All of this strikes at the heart of the defense case. While the prosecution wants the trial to be about the homicidal Whitey Bulger and the small handful of agents within in the FBI that he corrupted, the defense is hoping to posit Bulger as merely one player in a sweeping historical narrative, in which a tradition of corruption and secrecy was passed along from generation to generation. It is the defense’s position that the entire criminal-justice system in New England had long ago been “compromised,” with Bulger admittedly functioning as a racketeer, in partnership with the same corrupt system that now seeks to prosecute him. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the stand, Morris presents his version of the facts under the cloak of immunity. His former “best friend,” John Connolly, who Morris said “was like a brother to me,” rots in a Florida state prison on a murder conviction, based largely on the testimony of Morris at a previous trial. The man who was killed, John Callahan, a corrupt businessman, was whacked out in Miami by the Bulger gang, via underworld intel having been leaked to the gang possibly by Morris himself. Such is the nature of justice in the U.S. District of Massachusetts. 
 
 Asked why he came forward to divulge his crimes in the late 1990s, when Bulger went on the lam and Flemmi, for the first time, made it known publicly that he and Bulger had served as informants, Morris declared, “I didn’t want to carry that burden any more. I wanted to get out from under it.” 
 
 Under further questioning, Morris admitted he also sought an immunity deal because he was concerned that he could be prosecuted on a host of criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit murder. 
 
 Having already taken up nearly two full days in federal court, the testimony of Morris resumes today, Monday. ||||| A judge is telling Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger that the depravity of his crimes is "almost unfathomable" as she prepares to sentence him in 11 killings and other charges. 
 
 Steven Davis, center, brother of slain Debra Davis, speaks with reporters after James "Whitey" Bulger's sentencing hearing at federal court in Boston, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013. Bulger was convicted in... (Associated Press) 
 
 Defense attorneys J.W. Carney Jr., center, and Henry Brennan, right, speak with reporters after a sentencing hearing for their client James "Whitey" Bulger at federal court in Boston, Wednesday, Nov.... (Associated Press) 
 
 John "Jackie" Bulger leaves federal court in Boston, after a sentencing hearing for his brother James "Whitey" Bulger, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013. Whitey Bulger was convicted in August in a broad indictment... (Associated Press) 
 
 Sean McGonagle, the son of James "Whitey" Bulger victim Paul McGonagle, speaks with reporters after a sentencing hearing for Bulger at federal court in Boston, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013. Bulger was convicted... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this courtroom sketch, James "Whitey" Bulger sits at his sentencing hearing in federal court in Boston, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013. Bulger was convicted in August in a broad indictment that included... (Associated Press) 
 
 David Wheeler, left, son of Roger Wheeler, speaks with reporters next to his attorney, Frank Libby Jr., after a sentencing hearing for James "Whitey" Bulger at federal court in Boston, Wednesday, Nov.... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this courtroom sketch, Steven Davis, second right, brother of slain Debra Davis, is comforted by his wife, right, as he testifies at the sentencing hearing for James "Whitey" Bulger, left, at federal... (Associated Press) 
 
 Judge Denise Casper is explaining her sentence before imposing it. She calls Bulger's crimes "heinous" and "all about money." 
 
 Bulger is looking directly at her, listening intently. 
 
 The ongoing sentencing hearing ends a sordid chapter in Boston history featuring FBI and government corruption that helped Bulger continue a reign of terror for decades and flee the city just ahead of an indictment. 
 
 He was a fugitive for more than 16 years until he was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011. 
 
 THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. 
 
 Gangster James "Whitey" Bulger has heard from the families of some of the people he was convicted of killing. Now, he will finally hear his punishment. 
 
 Bulger, 84, faces a sentence of life in prison after being convicted in a string of murders in the 1970s and `80s, as well as extortion, money-laundering and weapons charges. 
 
 Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to sentence him to two consecutive life terms, plus five years. Bulger's lawyers declined to recommend a sentence, saying Bulger believes his trial was a "sham." 
 
 The 84-year-old South Boston crime boss will almost certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars. Judge Denise Casper will formally impose his sentence Thursday. 
 
 On Wednesday, a dozen relatives of murder victims gave impact statements in court, calling Bulger a "terrorist," a "punk" and even "Satan." Bulger sat stone-faced and refused to look at them or to make a statement of his own. 
 
 The son of a man who was gunned down by Bulger in 1974 addressed Bulger as "Satan" and described how his father, a member of a rival gang, first disappeared in 1974 but wasn't found until decades later when his body was discovered in a watery grave. 
 
 Sean McGonagle was 11 when his father, Paul, disappeared. He said Bulger called his family's house the following year and said, "Your father won't be coming home for Christmas." When he asked, "Who's this?" Bulger responded, "Santa Claus," McGonagle said. 
 
 "You're a domestic terrorist fueled by greed and sickening evil," McGonagle said. 
 
 Several family members blasted corrupt FBI agents for protecting Bulger for years while he was working simultaneously as a crime boss and an FBI informant who ratted out the rival New England Mafia and other crime groups. 
 
 David Wheeler, the son of a Tulsa, Okla., businessman who was shot between the eyes by a hit man for Bulger's gang, delivered a blistering condemnation of both the FBI and the Justice Department, which successfully argued to have his family's wrongful death lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that it was filed too late. 
 
 "They are as responsible for that murder as the defendant here sitting before you," Wheeler said. 
 
 Former Boston FBI agent John Connolly Jr. _ Bulger's handler when he was an informant _ was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of tipping the gangster off ahead of an indictment. After receiving the tip in 1994, Bulger fled Boston and remained a fugitive for more than 16 years until he was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011. Connolly was later convicted of second-degree murder in Florida for leaking information to Bulger that led to the slaying of a gambling executive. 
 
 Bulger claimed during his trial that a now-deceased federal prosecutor had given him immunity to commit crimes in exchange for Bulger's offer to protect him from the Mafia. The judge refused to allow Bulger to use that claim as a defense to his long list of crimes, including murders. 
 
 A jury convicted Bulger in 11 out of the 19 killings he was charged with participating in during the 1970s and `80s but acquitted him of seven killings and issued a "no finding" in the murder of 26-year-old Debra Davis, the girlfriend of his former partner, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi.
– Whitey Bulger's longtime FBI handler might be on the verge of freedom, after an appeals court threw out his murder conviction yesterday. In a 2-1 decision, the Miami judges ruled that because John Connolly Jr. hadn't actually pulled the trigger, he should never have been tried for the 1982 killing of businessman John Callahan, because the statute of limitations for second-degree murder without a firearm had run out by the time prosecutors charged him. Connolly had alerted Bulger that Callahan intended to inform on him to the FBI, prompting Bulger to hire a hit-man, the Boston Globe reports. "It’s interesting that he has a chance to be free," Callahan's widow said. "Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t have that chance." Connolly isn't free yet—the judges sent the case to a lower court "until any and all post-appeal motions are final," denying his lawyer's request for immediate release. Prosecutors do intend to seek a rehearing. "I'm just glad for him that he's finally going to be a free man," one Connolly lawyer tells the Boston Herald. "The only case against John has been out of the mouths of killers." The appeal had been predicted from the moment Connolly was convicted. (Click here for proof.)