Petti Appeal Attacks Wiretaps : Courts: Attorney wants reputed mobster’s money-laundering conviction overturned because of the government’s use of ‘roving wiretaps.’

Reputed mobster Chris Petti’s 1990 money-laundering conviction should be thrown out because most of the evidence against him was tainted by the nation’s first use of a “roving wiretap,” Petti’s lawyer told a federal appeals court Tuesday.

In the first appeals court test in the country of the novel law authorizing roving wiretaps, attorney Oscar Goodman told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the taps violate the constitutional right to privacy. The taps allow federal agents to bug multiple telephones, even public pay phones, to listen to a criminal suspect.

Prosecutors said the 1986 law strikes a sensible balance between an individual’s privacy rights and the need for law enforcement to keep pace with suspects who might use several phones to try to avoid detection. Prosecutors also urged the 9th Circuit court not just to affirm Petti’s conviction but to add to his sentence.

Petti, 64, was convicted in October, 1990, of six felony counts in connection with a money-laundering scheme that grew out of a federal probe of mob interest in the Rincon Indian reservation, in northern San Diego County.

From July, 1987, through early 1989, federal agents listened to thousands of phone calls, wiretaps aimed initially at Petti, who is believed to be connected to organized crime in Chicago and Las Vegas. Petti routinely used pay phones around San Diego, including a bank of pay phones at a Mission Valley hotel, to make his calls, according to prosecutors.

The taps led to San Diego financier Richard T. Silberman, who once served as a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., and to a money-laundering scheme. Prosecutors charged that Silberman, Petti and three other men laundered $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent had portrayed as the profits of Colombian cocaine trafficking.

Silberman, Petti and the three others were convicted or pleaded guilty to felony charges in the scheme.

Silberman, the ex-husband of County Supervisor Susan Golding, is serving a 46-month prison term. Petti was sentenced to 30 months in prison by U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving, the trial court judge, who called him a “pawn” in the scheme and said it would be unfair to sentence him to more time than Silberman received.

Petti has remained free on bail pending appeal.

Meanwhile, Petti, who has been a longstanding target of federal authorities, was hit in January with a new indictment--15 counts alleging that he and nine other men, including the reputed bosses of the Chicago mob, tried to infiltrate a gaming hall planned for the Rincon reservation. He remains free on bail in that case, too.

The new indictment stems from the same taps that led to the 1990 conviction. Goodman did not explicitly mention the new case Tuesday but has made it clear in the past that there would be no case at all against Petti--and not much of one against the reputed Chicago bosses--without the roving taps.

Irving ruled that the taps were legal, and Petti’s 1990 case centered on dozens of secretly recorded conversations that were played in open court. But Goodman said Tuesday that Petti deserved a new trial on the money laundering charges.

Even if the majority of Petti’s phone calls on any given day involved criminal plotting, that was still no reason to intrude on his personal affairs in every single call he made, Goodman said.

If upheld, the roving taps would mean there is “no place (Petti) can go where he can have some expectation of privacy,” Goodman said. “No place. And he should still have someplace to go.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol C. Lam, the prosecutor in the case, said the roving taps symbolized a Constitution flexible enough to change with technology.

“We have not yet reached the point where the criminal element may violate the laws, and law enforcement has no means to deal with that,” Lam said.

Urging the court to uphold the taps, she added, “What I have not seen or heard from (Goodman) is how a person’s privacy right differs from one telephone to another. That’s not a logical interpretation.”

Lam also argued that Petti deserved a stricter sentence. When Petti was sentenced, prosecutors had urged Irving to give Petti eight-to-10 years under rigid federal sentencing guidelines. But the judge demurred, saying Petti’s minor role in the case should mean a lighter sentence.

To hit Petti with more, Irving said at the time, would amount to an “unwarranted sentencing disparity.” Two weeks after sentencing Petti, Irving resigned from the bench in frustration with the sentencing guidelines.

Lam said Tuesday that it was “really disingenuous” to say that Petti played anything but a major role in the case. He had introduced Silberman to the undercover FBI agent and monitored events for months, she said.

And, Lam said, Irving’s sentence “was not justified by any analogy or explanation.” She asked for a new sentencing hearing but declined to say how much time prosecutors believe Petti deserves.

The three-judge panel asked few questions. There is no deadline by which Judges James R. Browning, Jerome Farris and Barbara Caulfield must issue a ruling, thus their decision could be weeks or months away.