In June of 2002, defense lawyer Michael Warren says he got a stroke of good luck.

Three young women set to testify that month against his client in a Brooklyn murder trial all suddenly wanted to change their story and tell him “the truth.”

Mr. Warren, who testified yesterday in a Brooklyn court, said he didn’t know about the women until he got a call from his client’s half-brother, Dupree Harris. Mr. Harris, a Bloods leader, is now on trial for bribing and intimidating the three witnesses.

The lawyer said that he never considered that Mr. Harris, who brought the women individually to his office, had pressured them or given them money.

“Honestly not,” he told jurors. “They wanted to recant their testimony…when they got there they were so relaxed.”

But prosecutors say that the meetings, which happened just weeks before the murder trial of Mr. Harris’s brother, Wesley Sykes, are proof of Mr. Harris’s guilt.

Yesterday the lawyer, who regularly appears in Brooklyn courtrooms, faced close questions about what was said – and left unsaid – at those meetings.

All three women have testified that Mr. Harris, known as “Turf,” asked them to lie and tell Mr. Warren that someone other than Mr. Sykes was guilty of a 2001 schoolyard shooting in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The girls said that Mr. Harris bought them meals and eventually paid them each more than $500.

But two of the women denied prosecutors’ assertions that Mr. Harris threatened and scared them. Mr. Harris says he never interfered with a witness.

On the days of the meetings, Mr. Harris sat close to the girls while they gave him taped statements, Mr. Warren said. But he rejected prosecutor Mitch Benson’s suggestion that Mr. Harris gave them signals about what to say.

“Absolutely not,” the lawyer said. “Not in my office.”

The three women told Mr. Warren that Corey McCullough, who was with Mr. Sykes that night, did the shooting.

Later, after meeting with Mr. Warren and learning that another witness in the case had been murdered, they changed their stories back and testified against Mr. Sykes, who was convicted of killing.

Mr. Benson asked Mr. Warren if he should have known during the meetings that something was wrong. On the tape, one witness gave a strange explanation for why she was recanting. She said that she had repeated “rumors” to prosecutors but later “found out” the truth about she had seen that night.

“I really know it was Corey who pulled the trigger,” she says.

How did you find out? Mr. Warren asks.

“Because I saw Corey with the gun,” she replied.

In court yesterday, Mr. Warren said he was taking down information and didn’t stop to probe the witnesses. “I wasn’t really passing judgment on whether it was unusual or not,” he testified.

Mr. Warren also said that it was not odd to allow Mr. Harris, who was paying his legal bills, to sit in on the interview. He did not mention Mr. Harris’s presence on the tapes.