LINCOLN — Lawyers for indicted former Town Administrator Jonathan F. Oster have asked the state Supreme Court to uphold a lower court ruling that threw out wiretap evidence against him and ordered prosecutors to provide more details about what information they plan to use at his trial.

The arguments were made in a brief filed with the court that responds to a state appeal brief filed in September. The attorney general’s office wants the Supreme Court to overturn Superior Court Judge Judith C. Savage’s ruling that wiretap evidence against Oster wasn’t handled according to state law and should be thrown out. Prosecutors are also asking the justices to overrule a disclosure order Savage issued, saying that complying would give away its case before the trial even starts.

But Oster lawyer John A. MacFayden said Savage was right to throw out the tapes because the state broke the law concerning the storage of wiretap tapes. He said the justices should also uphold the disclosure order because it was well within the court’s authority, followed established legal procedures and was needed to produce a fair trial.

The state’s appeal has held up Oster’s trial on two counts of bribery and two counts of conspiracy to commit bribery. In part, the appeal focuses on tapes produced in 2001 and 2002 from wiretaps on phones belonging to ex-Planning Board member Robert R. Picerno.

Picerno and Oster were arrested in February 2002. Picerno pleaded no contest to four counts of soliciting bribes and three of conspiracy to solicit bribes, and in 2004 was sentenced to three years at the Adult Correctional Institutions. He has since been released to home confinement to serve the remainder of his sentence.

State law requires that when police use a wiretap, they must keep the resulting tapes under a court seal in a safe-deposit box. The state doesn’t dispute that the seal on the box containing the 71 tape recordings made in the Lincoln case was broken, but does dispute Oster’s right to contest them. The tapes were produced from wiretaps on Picerno’s phones, the state argues, not Oster’s, so Oster doesn’t meet the standard of an “aggrieved person” that the law sets to allow him to contest their admission.

MacFayden argued that Oster clearly has standing because the tapes were aimed at getting information about him.

“By any practical definition, Mr. Oster is a person against whom the interceptions were ‘directed’ here,” the brief said.

“Mr. Oster is one of the people the state had in its sights — indeed, was much more of a target than Picerno himself — from the moment it began its Picerno eavesdropping campaign,” it said. “The surveillance was `directed’ against him. He therefore has standing as an ‘aggrieved person’ to challenge the conceded deficiencies in sealing the ensuing tapes.…”

Savage also ordered the state to detail for the court which witnesses it would call and what prior statements or testimony their court testimony would be based upon. She also ordered that the state specify, with summaries and itemized lists, what statements of Oster’s it intended to use.

MacFayden called on the high court to uphold that order, saying the state had assembled such a large amount of potential evidence — the grand jury testimony alone ran 5,000 pages, he said — hat the defense needed a more specific listing of the evidence to be used against its client.

He cited at 1992 case in which the Supreme Court ordered a new trial on the grounds that rather than hide information from the defense, the state gave the defense so much that it was impossible to get through it all in time.

“A list of witnesses means just that — the people who will testify at trial,” MacFayden wrote, quoting the 1992 decision. “It does not mean everyone the attorney general department or the police interview in investigating the state’s case … too much information can be as useless as no information at all.”

MacFayden contested the state’s position on procedural grounds as well. The initial disclosure order had been issued in October 2003, he said. The state didn’t appeal it until the court reiterated those initial instructions in 2004. The time to file was 20 days after the 2003 order, he said, not when the court reminded the state in 2004. MacFayden argued to let the state argue its disclosure opposition now would simply reward it for its deadline error.