Record
Court opinion
1997-05-22
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
United States v. Salemme, 978 F. Supp. 343 (D. Mass. 1997)
Judge Wolf's memorandum of May 22, 1997, unsealed in part in June 1997, granting hearings on motions to suppress three sets of electronic surveillance, including the 1989 Medford recording, and ordering discovery on whether certain men were Government informants.
- Date
- 1997-05-22
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- Cr. Nos. 94-10287, 97-10009
- Rights
- Opinion of a United States court. Works of the federal judiciary are in the public domain in the United States. The text was read on CourtListener.
United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Mark Wolf, May 22, 1997. The memorandum and order was first sealed. Defendants including Francis Salemme, Stephen Flemmi, James Martorano and Robert DeLuca moved to suppress evidence from three sets of electronic surveillance: 1984 and 1985 DEA and FBI surveillance “which targeted Bulger, Flemmi, and George Kaufman, among others”; the surveillance “conducted on October 29, 1989, by the FBI, at 34 Guild Street, Medford, Massachusetts”; and surveillance “conducted on December 11, 1990, by the FBI, at the Hilton Hotel in East Boston, Massachusetts.” The court granted evidentiary hearings and ordered discovery on whether Angelo “Sonny” Mercurio, Bulger, Flemmi and others had secretly been informants.
An unsealing order of June 28, 1997 explains that the redacted portions were released “because Angelo ‘Sonny’ Mercurio has testified, and the government has acknowledged, that he was an informant for the government in connection with the October 29, 1989 electronic surveillance of 34 Guild Street, Medford, Massachusetts.”
The caption on CourtListener reads “Francis J. Salemme”; the 1999 opinion and the Justice Department releases use “Francis P. Salemme.” The hearings ordered here led to the findings in 91 F. Supp. 2d 141.