Defense Says Puopolo Jury Manipulated

While witnesses in the Puopolo murder retrial described the 1976 confrontation in Boston's Combat Zone in increasingly bloody detail last week, defense attorneys continued to accuse the prosecution of manipulating the jury.

Francis E. Dutton, an MBTA employee, testified during a special session on Saturday he saw defendant Edward Soares beating Andrew P. Puopolo '77 after Puopolo had been stabbed in the abdomen. Raymond "Scott" Coolidge '78, another member of the Harvard football team, testified on Friday that he saw Leon Easterling, another defendant, repeatedly stab Puopolo in the chest near the van in which several of the players travelled to the Zone for a traditional end-of-season celebration.

Puopolo died on Dec. 17, 1976, in Tufts-New England Medical Center. Easterling, Soares and Richard S. Allen were convicted of the murder in March 1977, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court granted them a retrial earlier this year because the prosecution had systematically eliminated blacks from the jury. The three defendants are black.

Thomas J. Mundy Jr., Suffolk County assistant district attorney, has also charged Easterling with assault and battery with a deadly weapon in the stabbing of Thomas J. Lincoln '77.

As he did in the first trial, Mundy has argued that the defendants made a premeditated attack on the football players after several members of the team chased a prostitute they thought had stolen the wallet of Charles Kaye '78. The defense says Easterling, Soares and Allen acted independently in coming to the prostitute's aid.

Henry F. Owens III, Allen's attorney, said yesterday Mundy "has made an obvious attempt to influence the jury with evidence that has nothing to do with the trial," adding that information on the defendants' past associations with prostitutes should not be presented to the jury.