Vice Expert Testifies in Puopolo Trial

The prosecution in the Andrew P. Puopolo '77 murder retrial yesterday presented testimony which it believes will further prove that the attack on Harvard football players in November, 1976 was premeditated. The jury can convict the three defendants of first-degree murder if premeditation is proven.

Edward Miller, a Boston police detective who worked for the vice control unit at the time of the Puopolo stabbing, testified that men who frequent the Combat Zone often assist prostitutes in robbing male pedestrians. Thomas J. Mundy Jr., Suffolk County assistant district attorney, has said the three defendants were providing such assistance when they fought with the Harvard students and thus acted with forethought.

Spontaneous Response

Defense attorneys have argued that their clients responded spontaneously in aiding the prostitutes who were running away from the football players after the alleged robbery.

Before Miller testified, Norman S. Zalkind, attorney for defendant Leon Easterling, said the evidence the detective could offer was "so prejudicial and so irrelevant that it taints the prosecution of this case," adding that it was "not evidence that leads to conviction for murder or assault."

Andrew Good and Henry F. Owens III, attorneys for defendants Edward Soares and Richard S. Allen, respectively, also protested Miller's testimony for the same reasons.

New Trial

Puopolo died on Dec. 17,1976, a month after he was stabbed. Easterling, Soares and Allen were convicted of the murder in March, 1977, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court granted them a retrial earlier this year because the court said the prosecution had systematically eliminated blacks from the jury. The three defendants are black.

The trial continues today in Suffolk County Superior Court.