Second Puopolo Murder Trial Begins

The second trial of the three men accused of murdering Andrew P. Puopolo '77 and assaulting Thomas Lincoln '77 began this week in Suffolk County Superior Court, two weeks before the third anniversary of the incident in Boston's Combat Zone.

Big Change

The scene in the Government Center courtroom differed markedly from the first trial in March 1977, when attorneys' emphasized the racial implication of the confrontation between the three black defenders and the white Harvard football players.

Instead of the highly-charged atmosphere of the original procedings, the retrial--ordered last spring by Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court because of the prosecution's systematic exclusion of blacks from the first jury--has moved along slowly, the four lawyers using technicalities to gain the upper hand.

In his opening statement Tuesday, Thomas J. Mundy Jr, Suffolk County assistant district attorney, said he would prove that the football players, who were in the Zone celebrating the end of the 1976 season, and a group of black men engaged in a series of increasingly violent confrontations in the early hours of Nov. 16 that led to the stabbing of Puopolo.

The first major witness to testify, Chester Stone, equipment manager for the department of athletics, described the early events of the evening.

The prosecution's case, in which many former Harvard students will testify, continues this week. The entire trial is expected to last for about three weeks.