‘Roving Wiretaps’ Upheld in First Appeal Court Test : Privacy: 1986 federal law allows bugging of multiple telephones, including pay phones. The convictions of a reputed mobster and a San Diego businessman stand.

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the nation’s first “roving wiretaps,” which led to the convictions of reputed mobster Chris Petti and prominent San Diego businessman Richard T. Silberman, were legal.

Affirming Petti’s conviction on felony charges of money laundering, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Monday there was no merit to defense contentions that the roving taps violate a criminal suspect’s constitutional right to privacy. On separate grounds, the court ordered Petti to do even more time behind bars than he had drawn originally.

The decision marked the first appellate court ruling in the nation on the legality of the roving taps. Authorized by a 1986 federal law, the taps enable police and prosecutors to bug multiple telephones, even public pay phones, to listen to a criminal suspect.

That law, the 9th Circuit Court said Monday, strikes a sensible balance between an individual’s privacy rights and the need for law enforcement to keep pace with sophisticated criminals who might use several phones to try to avoid detection.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol Lam, who prosecuted Petti and Silberman two years ago in San Diego’s federal court, called the ruling “very gratifying.”

Petti’s defense lawyer, Las Vegas attorney Oscar Goodman, said he will seek a rehearing at the 9th Circuit Court and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

“The (U.S.) Constitution took another whack on the jaw today,” Goodman said Monday. “Soon, government agents will be allowed to completely intrude into our most private thoughts.”

Petti, 64, who is free on bail pending appeal, could not be reached for comment. He was convicted in October, 1990, of six felony counts in connection with a money-laundering scheme uncovered in a federal investigation 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, according to prosecutors.

The taps led to Silberman, a San Diego financier 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 drug profits.

Silberman--the former husband of county Supervisor Susan Golding, a current San Diego mayoral candidate--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 anything like the time Silberman received.

Though the law permits agents to bug even banks of phones, that means only those phones that agents know a criminal suspect favors, which satisfies the Constitution’s demand that a warrant “particularly describes” the phones to be tapped, U.S. Circuit Judge James R. Browning said.

In addition, the law demands that agents stop listening to a conversation as soon as they determine that the target is not on the line.

Those safeguards, Browning said, block the potential under a roving wiretap for a “wide-ranging exploratory search” and mean there is “virtually no possibility of abuse or mistake.”

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.

The 9th Circuit Court’s ruling means that the dozens of secret tapes used at Petti’s first trial will be available to prosecutors in the new case against the reputed bosses of the Chicago mob.

Browning also noted that although Petti was properly convicted at his first trial, he was improperly sentenced to only 30 months in prison. Rigid new federal sentencing guidelines no longer permit a judge so much discretion in sentencing, Browning said.

Instead, Browning said, the rules require Petti to serve between 37 and 46 months in prison. Browning sent the case back to San Diego for resentencing.

Judges Jerome Farris and Barbara Caulfield joined the opinion.