Cohoes man convicted of heroin, crack sales after drug trial | Local

He was arrested by the Warren County Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Enforcement Unit, after an investigation that used a confidential informant to purchase 6 grams of crack and 4 grams of a heroin/fentanyl mixture under police supervision.

As technology and drug investigation practices have changed, authorities rarely see felony drug case trials these days.

“They are few and far between,” Warren County District Attorney Jason Carusone said of drug trials.

Most buys are videotaped and audiotaped, and police try to make drug purchases on multiple days to try to defuse any arguments that the purchases were improperly set up by an informant trying to get out of trouble themselves.

Police said the drug purchases from Muniz occurred on one day, as he disappeared afterward and police did not arrange a second buy.

Muniz’s lawyer, Greg Canale, claimed during the trial that the case was a “scam” and that the informant, Billie Joe Ryle, “set up” his client. Ryle had two hidden cameras, but neither was pointed toward the drugs that Muniz sold as the transaction took place.

Canale also questioned why Ryle did not follow the plan that police had given him, making a stop on the way to the parking lot where the sale took place, and parking in a different area than planned.

He pointed out that Ryle had multiple prior felony drug arrests as well.

Carusone praised the work of the Sheriff’s Office narcotics team, as well as the prosecutors who handled the case, First Assistant District Attorney Matthew Burin and Robert McCarty.

Muniz was sent to Warren County Jail without bail pending sentencing March 7 by Warren County Judge John Hall. He has at least one prior felony drug conviction, a 2011 case in Saratoga County that resulted in an 18-month prison sentence, and faces up to 12 years on each of the felony charges.