Finding that the police used ilegal wiretaps, a Supreme Court, justice has ordered a new trial for three men who got terms up to 25 years on charges of bribery and of oper ating a heroin processing “fac tory” in the Bronx.
The reversal culminates a three‐year legal battle by Her bert S. Siegal, defense attorney.
According to Mr. Siegal, the police lied in alleging that their case was built on information from an informer rather than from weeks of unauthorized wiretapping.
Harold Munger, 1311 Burke Avenue; Gerald Hartley; 2332 Tiebout Avenue, and Saint Julian Harrison, 1000 East 215th Street.
A United States Supreme Court ruling a few years ago knocked the main props from under the state's wiretapping law. Legal sources said yester day that the taps in the Bronx case were illegal primarily be cause no “probable cause of crime being committed” had been established prior to their use.
The so‐called heroin “factory” was in a three‐and‐a‐half room apartment at 2020 Arthur‐Ave nue in the Bronx. Narcotics agents who raided the premises in 1966 told of a “factory” oper ation with men and women at work “cutting,” or diluting, pure heroin and putting it in glassine enyelopes for sale on the street.
They reported that 26.4 pounds of pure heroin were seized, enough when “cut” to provide more than a half‐million injections.
“There was enough heroin there to supply all the addicts in the United States for a week.” In rounding up Munger, Hart ley and Harrison as the leaders of the ring, narcotics agents also reported receiving a $20, 221 bribe from Munger, and that money was exhibited along with the heroin at the original trial.
Mr. Siegal carried his fight about the wiretap to the Court of Appeals after being rebuffed at the first trial in Bronx Su preme Court and after the Ap pellate Division had affirmed the convictions.
After presenting an applica tion to Stanley H. Fuld, chief judge of the Court of Appeals, he was permitted to argue be fore the state's highest court. As a result, the Court of Ap peals ordered the case returned to Bronx Supreme Court for hearing that lasted eight weeks on Mr. Siegal's cha'rge that the police lied about how they got information on the defendants.
According to Mr. Siegal, the police committed perjury when they said in an affidavit that an informer had given them the information upon which they applied a search warrant that preceded the raid on the Arthur Avenue apartment.
At the trial, the District At torney based his case on reputed informant, and Mr. Siegal's effort to have the tapes produced was blocked.
During the wiretap hearings, about 50 tapes of telephone conversations were produced, and played back. Mr. Siegal argued that the prosecution had originally tried to conceal the existence of the tapes.
Justice Marks noted in his decision that the District Attor ney at the outset of the hear ings conceded the illegality of the wiretaps. The burden was then on the prosecution to show that the wiretap informa tion did not lead to any of the evidence used in the trial, he said.