PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — The R.I. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a major blow to a criminal case against members of two biker gangs, agreeing with a lower case that key evidence must be suppressed after authorizations for wiretaps were improperly approved.
The case involves Deric “Tuna” McGuire, who police identified as the head of the Pagan motorcycle gang, along with dozens of other defendants that are together facing hundreds of drug and gun counts.
Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office will now “reevaluate the cases” in light of the ruling, spokesperson Blake Collins said.
“Today’s decision in this important case for public safety is a disappointment to this office,” Collins said.
At issue in the case is who signs off on the paperwork that allows investigators to secretly listen in on phone conversations. By law, only the presiding justice of the Superior Court is authorized to approve a wiretap — currently Alice Gibney — or the senior associate justice, if the presiding justice cannot do so.
Gibney did OK the original wiretap request from prosecutors, according to court documents, but later went on medical leave. She designated the task of signing off on further wiretap requests to Associate Justice Melanie Wilk Thunberg.
The senior associate justice is Robert Krause. McGuire and his co-defendants subsequently asked the court to suppress evidence obtained via the intercepted phone calls, arguing the wiretaps were signed by someone unauthorized to do so.
A Superior Court judge ruled in McGuire’s favor in 2019, and the AG’s office appealed the case to the R.I. Supreme Court.
The justices acknowledged that a different state law allows the presiding justice to “designate an associate justice to perform the duties” during an absence, which is what Gibney did when she designated the job to Thunberg.
But that law doesn’t supersede the wiretap statute, the Supreme Court concluded, which narrowly defines who can sign off on such orders.
Insane Throttle Biker News 