LIMITATIONS OF LEGAL WIRETAPS ISSUE IN DRUG TRAFFICKING CASE

U.S. District Judge Gene Carter has raised an interesting question relating
to the arrest last December of numerous individuals suspected to be involved
in drug trafficking.

Attorneys for the defendants have asked Carter to suppress evidence against
their clients because they question its validity and propriety.

Federal agents conducted a phone tap on the suspects - the first time the
measure has been used in Maine in a criminal case. The difficulty for the
lawyers - and possibly, Carter - is that civilians were used to monitor the
calls and the defendants have questioned the competency of the civilians,
the adherence to the strictures of the court-approved surveillance tactic,
and the degree of supervision exercised by the agents who were responsible
for the action.

Complicating the issue is the fact that the phone calls were believed to
have been conducted in Spanish and the federal agents were not conversant in
the language.

The defendants are asking whether the supervisors' ignorance rendered them
incapable of meeting their stringent requirements regarding the extent of
the phone taps and whether their inability to comprehend the language used
in the calls placed so great a reliance upon the allegedly untrained
civilians so as to render the process tainted and, thus, inadmissible.

Carter initially asked for the question to be raised, but allowed the phone
taps to be admitted pending a refined challenge from the defense attorneys.

That revision is now before the federal judge, who is expected to rule
within the new few weeks on whether the taps remain as evidence.

Given the demands the phone tap placed upon the agents, it would have been
preferable that a bilingual officer be used to monitor the calls. Absent
that option, the agents in charge used the next best recourse, one they
contend has already been in use and accepted elsewhere. Monitors - civilian
or otherwise - are required to turn off wiretaps upon hearing suspects
discussing issues not within the scope of an investigation.

Agents broke up the alleged drug ring after listening to more than 1,500
conversations on a cell phone belonging to the alleged ringleader, who was
shot and killed during the resulting raid. Eighteen arrests were made, many
of them based on evidence gathered from the wiretaps.

Now Carter is to decide whether the agents' recourse was sufficient to
comply with the wiretap authorization and did not violate either it or the
defendants' rights in the process. His decision will no doubt be thoroughly
analyzed.