What a Boston College Law Professor Concluded About This Case

By Mrs. Eileen Hunter — about the author.

Professor Robert M. Bloom has taught at Boston College Law School since 1973 and has researched informants in the criminal justice system since 1999 — the author of Ratting: Use and Abuse of Informants in the American Justice System, an expert witness in Connecticut, Washington and Kentucky courts. In 2022, he reviewed the testimony, recorded statements, and criminal histories of all four informants in State v. Hunter. His sworn conclusion, filed with the court:

“…the lack of external corroboration for the informants’ testimony, the media contamination of the informants, the number of cases the informants were providing information about and their status as career offenders facing lengthy sentences at the discretion of the prosecution, the informants’ perceived and/or real incentives to provide information against Tony Hunter and to testify falsely, and the failure to give a cautionary jury instruction, raise serious risks that the informants’ testimony was fabricated and/or false.”

The full declaration is transcribed here; his research and its limits are on the Bloom page.

The other half: Professor Bloom is a retained defense expert who expressly does not opine on any particular witness’s credibility, and no court has heard his testimony in this case — the application his declaration accompanied was denied without a hearing.