INFORMANT'S CLAIMS ATTACKED BY DEFENSE

Witness Testifies That Schenectady Cop Offered Money For Help In Arrest

UTICA -- A former police informant testified Thursday that Schenectady Lt.
Michael Hamilton offered her $500 to help him arrest David Sampson, who
earlier accused two city cops of loading him into their patrol car and
dumping him on a rural road in Glenville without his shoes.

Sampson's claims followed a string of brutality complaints in the summer of
1999, which prompted the FBI to come to Schenectady and probe allegations
of police corruption.

The two police officers accused of taking Sampson on the one-way ride to
Glenville, Michael Siler and Richard Barnett, have pleaded guilty to
extortion and drug distribution and were fired. Both cops worked under
Hamilton's supervision. Sampson has a civil rights lawsuit pending against
the city and Thursday was the first time the incident surfaced at Hamilton
and Officer Nicola Messere's trial on racketeering charges. Both are
accused of trading drugs for information.

Hamilton's informant, Seba Richards, testified that the lieutenant
approached her while she was standing on Emmett Street. "He needed someone
to get Naquan," she said, referring to Sampson. "He offered to pay me to
get him." Sampson was later arrested on drug-related charges but without
Richards' help. He is now in prison.

Richards is in jail on drug charges, and her credibility was attacked by
defense lawyers. Hamilton's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, called out highlights
from her lengthy rap sheet: Prostitution. Fraud. Assault. He showed the
jury a mug shot of a forlorn-looking man with a bloody eye. "That's David's
eye after you touched it with the two-by-four, right?" Tacopina asked
sarcastically. Richards identified the man as a "trick" who would pay her
for sex, but she denied batting him in the head during a shopping trip gone
bad.

Richards said both Hamilton and Messere gave her crack but couldn't
remember dates. She was, however, able to recite phone numbers for both
cops, including the home of Hamilton's wife's family. Richards acknowledged
she worked mainly with Hamilton and was "more of a Mike fan than a Nick fan."

The defense questioned Richards to try to discredit the testimony of
previous prosecution witnesses. On Wednesday, a fellow drug user, Laura
Hosier, boasted she used to see Hamilton disappear with Richards for hours
at a clip, three times a week, into a motel room to have sex.

"Did you have ever have sex with Mike Hamilton?" Tacopina asked Richards.

"No way!" she shouted. "Where'd you get that?"

She shook her head before responding to her own question, "I don't want to
know."

Richards and two other government witnesses have testified to having sex
with Siler, who is now cooperating with the FBI. The defense is expected to
turn these assertions against Siler when he takes the stand against his
fellow officers next week in a similar attempt to discredit him.

The defense harped on inconsistencies in Richards' statements and, in a
surreal moment, asked Hamilton's twin brother, Jim, the chief of police in
Rotterdam, to approach the witness stand. In her testimony before the grand
jury in 2000, Richards claimed Jim Hamilton came to her apartment once
pretending to be Mike, but she was convinced it wasn't Mike because Jim is
"bigger." Tacopina showed that the identical twins are the same height and
suggested Richards was hallucinating.

Richards was also questioned about an enduring mystery to the
investigation: why she told the FBI in August 1999 that Siler and Barnett
gave her drugs but waited until June 2000 to implicate Hamilton and
Messere. Richards said she held back because she was scared and knew "what
cops could do." Tacopina pointed out that both Siler and Barnett were still
patrolling the streets when she told on them, making her justification seem
illogical.

Tacopina accused Richards of giving federal agents dirt on Hamilton and
Messere so she could get a deal. At the time, she was facing up to 20 years
in prison on federal drug charges, but after her cooperation had been
secured, she was sentenced to just 18 months.

"In all honesty, you'd say anything to get out of jail, wouldn't you?"
Tacopina asked.

"Yeah," she replied.

Defense lawyers will continue questioning Richards today.