weird behaviour with servlet and ssl

[Charles Talbott]

I have a servlet which calls an application to retrieve pages, connect to other entities, etc. I am trying to add SSL functionality so that I can optionally open a secure connection from the app to wherever.
When I add the code to choose which protocol I want to use, suddenly the servlet and app stop working. Somehow, it appears that System and Security methods are causing the failure, but they are in a method that shouldn't even be called except in special circumstances. Has anyone encountered anything like this?

URL url = new URL(theURLString);
HttpURLConnection con = null;
if (isSecure != null)
{
//set jsse params to enable https protocol
System.setProperty("java.protocol.handler.pkgs",
    "com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol");
Security.addProvider(new com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Provider());
con = (HttpsURLConnection) url.openConnection();
}
else
{
con = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
}

Any insight is greatly appreciated!