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. 
 
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 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 ||||| Federal prosecutors have for months unsuccessfully pressured James “Whitey” Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, to testify before a grand jury investigating whether other people helped the notorious South Boston gangster during his 16 years as a fugitive. 
 
 On Tuesday, the government upped the stakes for Greig, 64, by obtaining a new indictment charging her with criminal contempt, which could keep her in prison for many more years if she is convicted. 
 
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 The new charge comes after Greig refused to testify before the grand jury, despite being found in civil contempt last December and warned that for every day she stayed quiet, another day would be tagged onto the eight-year sentence she is already serving for helping Bulger evade capture. 
 
 “Catherine Greig has yet again failed to do the right thing,” Joseph R. Bonavolonta, the acting head of the FBI’s Boston office, said in a statement Tuesday. “Her refusal to testify has hindered the FBI’s efforts to seek justice for the victims of [Bulger’s] crimes.” 
 
 Greig’s attorney accused the government of vindictiveness and harassment for bringing the new charge. He and Greig’s sister said it’s wrong for the government to try to punish Greig more severely than some of Bulger’s underworld associates who were involved in brutal murders, but were granted leniency in exchange for cooperating with authorities. 
 
 “She knows nothing,” Greig’s twin sister, Margaret McCusker of South Boston, said during a brief telephone interview Tuesday. “There is no reason for her to talk to anybody because she doesn’t know anything.” 
 
 McCusker questioned the fairness of bringing a new charge against her sister, referring to plea deals that allowed one Bulger associate to walk free after serving only 12 years for 20 murders, and another to serve only five years in prison for being an accessory to five murders. 
 
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 “My sister may eventually be spending as much time in prison for being with someone she loved as his associates who killed and/or buried people,” McCusker said. “That’s nuts.” 
 
 However, the widow of one of Bulger’s victims said she was happy the government was increasing pressure on Greig in an effort to track Bulger’s hidden assets and determine whether others helped the gangster elude a worldwide manhunt while he was a longtime fixture on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. 
 
 “I would like her to tell all,” said Patricia Donahue, whose husband, Michael, was shot to death by Bulger in 1982 while giving a ride home to a friend being targeted by Bulger. “Tell exactly what went on when they were on the run. Where is his money?” 
 
 Globe Staff File Whitey Bulger and Catherine Greig walked together with her two poodles in 1988. 
 
 Attorney Kevin Reddington, who represents Greig, said her only crime was living with Bulger while he was a fugitive. He said she has repeatedly been brought back from a federal prison in Minnesota to appear before the grand jury in Boston even though she has said she has no information and will not testify. 
 
 “She has great respect for the court, but she does have contempt for the federal government for using its power to vindictive ends,” Reddington said. “She will not be a tool of the government’s efforts to further harass people, whether family or friends.” 
 
 US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said in a statement Tuesday the new indictment seeks to hold Greig accountable for refusing to comply with a judge’s order to testify. 
 
 “The grand jury is entitled to her testimony and flouting a federal court’s order has substantial consequences,” Ortiz said. 
 
 No date has been set for Greig’s arraignment on the new charge in federal court in Boston. 
 
 The one-count indictment says that US District Judge Denise J. Casper, who presided over Bulger’s 2013 racketeering trial, issued an order Nov. 20, 2014, compelling Greig to testify before the grand jury “regarding an investigation into third parties who assisted and harbored” Bulger while he was a fugitive from 1995 to 2011. It alleges that Greig willfully disobeyed the order from Dec. 9, 2014, to Sept. 22, 2015. 
 
 Greig did not cite her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to Reddington, who said Greig refused to testify because, “if it’s not what the government wants to hear you are going to get indicted for perjury.” 
 
 Reddington said he will seek a speedy trial on the new charge and “let a jury decide whether this is vindictiveness on the part of the government or an act of criminal contempt, which I don’t believe it is.” 
 
 Bulger, a longtime FBI informant who paid bribes to agents who leaked him information, was tipped to flee by a corrupt former FBI agent just before his 1995 indictment. Greig, a former dental hygienist who grew up in South Boston and began dating Bulger in the mid-1970s, joined him on the run in early 1995 after he dropped another longtime girlfriend off at home. 
 
 Bulger and Greig were arrested in June 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif., living in a rent-controlled apartment two blocks from the beach. FBI agents found $822,000 in cash and 30 guns hidden in the walls of their apartment. 
 
 Greig pleaded guilty in June 2012 to conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, conspiracy to commit identity fraud, and identity fraud. A federal appeals court later rejected her claim that her sentence was excessive, concluding that she helped Bulger evade detection by using false identities, purchasing his medications, running daily errands, and paying their bills. She is serving her sentence at a federal penitentiary in Waseca, Minn, where she trains service dogs. 
 
 Bulger, 86, is serving a life sentence at a federal penitentiary in Florida for participating in 11 murders while operating a sprawling criminal organization from the 1970s to the 1990s. He was ordered to forfeit $25.2 million to the government and prosecutors have vowed to track his assets and split them among the families of Bulger’s victims. 
 
 In letters from jail since his capture, Bulger described his time on the run with Greig as a 16-year honeymoon and complained about her stiff sentence. 
 
 “She did what all the cops, prisons, and courts couldn’t,” Bulger wrote to his longtime friend, Richard Sunday. “Got me to live crime free 16 years — for this they should give her a medal.” 
 
 Read the Greig indictment below:
– 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.)