BOSTON -- Jurors in the trial of John Connolly were told Wednesday that they would have to decide whether Connolly was an FBI agent who broke his vows and became a mobster himself or a much-decorated agent who helped break the mafia only to be sold out by the government.

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NewsCenter 5's David Boeri reported that in an opening statement, prosecutors told jurors that Connolly did not have the normal sort of handler-informer relationship with mobsters Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi. They said Connolly had a personal relationship in which he accepted bribes and obstructed justice.

Prosecutors said that Bulger gave Connolly a diamond ring worth more than $5,000 in 1976. Connolly led a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said, and Bulger allegedly complained to associates that "Connolly was showing too much money. It was obvious. It was stupid, people will see."

Connolly allegedly gave Bulger and Flemmi the names of informants who were informing against them. Soon after, each one would be murdered.

Connolly's attorney told the jurors that his client was unaware of the full extent of Bulger's and Flemmi's criminality. He said that Connolly did not choose to associate with the mobsters; the FBI told him to.

With its first witness Wednesday afternoon, the government set out to prove that a day after the U.S. attorney's office told the FBI in 1994 that it planned to indict Bulger and Flemmi, Connolly, who had been retired from the FBI, passed that information on to Bulger, who's still a fugitive.