WITNESS STICKS TO HIS TESTIMONY

PITTSFIELD -- The prosecution in the case of an Otis teen accused of
selling drugs in a Great Barrington school zone, one of 17 cases in
which young people are facing mandatory jail time, rested yesterday
with a final effort by the defense to discredit the case's key police
witness. Officer Felix Aguirre, on redirect examination by Prosecutor
Richard Locke, repeatedly stated that Kyle Sawin, 18, appeared calm,
easygoing and sober when he made his daylight deals to sell small
bags on three occasions last summer in and around the Taconic Lumber
parking lot.

Defense attorney Judith Knight has indicated that she will present
testimony that Sawin was an impressionable teen who was pressured
heavily by Aguirre to sell marijuana last year; she has also
suggested that she'll explore a claim made by another drug sweep
defendant that Aguirre smoked marijuana and bought beer for the teens.

Yesterday, Knight tried to ask Aguirre if he had ever used marijuana,
but prosecutor Richard Locke jumped to his feet with an outraged
objection, which was sustained by Judge John A. Agostini. Aguirre had
begun to say no before Knight's questioning was shut down.

Whether Knight intends to introduce such evidence from other
witnesses when she begins her case Monday remains to be seen.

Another young man arrested in last year's sting operation, Mitchell
Lawrence, signed an affidavit in a pretrial motion for his own case,
stating that he'd seen Aguirre smoke marijuana and buy beer for young
people. Aguirre, 29, a seven-year undercover officer for both
Springfield and Pittsfield Police, has signed his own affidavit
denying the claim. Yesterday, Mitchell's lawyer, Richard Simon, was
in court watching the proceedings, but declined to comment on whether
his client would testify against Aguirre. Aguirre also told Knight
that, because he was older than most of the teens he was socializing
with last summer, many times he was asked to buy alcohol and would
always decline. He told them he did not have identification on him,
he told the jury.

Knight's questions suggesting that Aguirre "set up" purchases in the
Taconic parking lot did not withstand his replies: Aguirre said he
went to the parking lot because that's where the drug dealers were
believed to be. But he said he would meet them wherever they wanted
to make his transactions. "I made a deal inside 87 Railroad St.,
inside the tunnel, behind Berkshire Bank, on Elm Street," he said of
the adjacent areas where he was asked to go. The locations all
happened to be within 1,000 feet of either the Great Barrington
Co-operative Pre-School and/or Searles/Bryant Elementary School. "Why
didn't you pick the spots?" Knight asked Aguirre. "Because that would
be entrapment," said Aguirre, referring to a form of police
misconduct that Knight intends to raise in Sawin's defense.
Prosecution witnesses have already established that the Taconic
parking lot was a long-standing in-town hangout for young people,
many of whom were buying and selling drugs in broad daylight.

Knight said yesterday that, when she begins her case Monday, quite a
different picture will emerge of both Aguirre and Sawin. "I expect my
case will challenge Aguirre's credibility, and that the jury will see
a whole other side to Kyle Sawin and the way things were handled in
that parking lot," said Knight after testimony concluded yesterday.
She has been leading up to a defense of entrapment, in which she
intends to show that Sawin would not have dealt drugs to Aguirre were
it not for his vulnerability, his desire to be liked and his problem
with marijuana. Other lawyers watching the case say the entrapment
defense is a difficult one to employ, requiring an extremely
incorruptible defendant. The summer-long drug investigation concluded
Sept. 17 when police began arresting numerous young people who had
sold drugs to Aguirre, starting in June 2004. A total of 18 were
nabbed for hand-to-hand sales of marijuana, cocaine, ketamine and
Ecstasy. Seventeen defendants were indicted in Superior Court with
school-zone drug violations.

Sawin is one of seven whose cases have been taken up by Concerned
Citizens for Appropriate Justice, a group organized to protest
District Attorney David F. Capeless' use of the school-zone drug law
to prosecute young people with no prior records and small marijuana
sales. If convicted, the defendants face mandatory jail time.

In Sawin's case, the testimony of Aguirre and four surveillance
police officers and a land surveyor has appeared to nail down the
whereabouts of the drug deals, all of which were measured within
1,000 feet of two local schools on the opposite side of Main Street.

Each day, the courtroom has picked up more spectators -- lawyers
representing other defendants whose cases are looming -- and members
of the citizens' group. Stephen Picheny of Great Barrington, a member
of the group, stopped in court yesterday as the day concluded.

"I'm just outraged," he said. "I believe these people did something
wrong, but two years in prison is an outrage. As a concerned citizen
and parent of teens, I think this is outrageous.

"Look at this poor kid," said Picheny, as Sawin mingled with his
parents, Darryl and Laurie Sawin of Otis.

Sawin is charged with selling three "eighth-ounce" plastic bags of
marijuana to Aquirre on three occasions on June 30, July 6 and Sept.
3, 2004. He also faces three charges of violating drug laws within a
school zone.