Won't retry McDougal on contempt counts, Starr says

ERICA WERNER
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Susan McDougal was freed for good Tuesday afternoon from pursuit by her old nemesis, independent counsel Kenneth Starr.
In court papers filed in federal court in Little Rock, Starr said he would not retry McDougal on two counts of criminal contempt because it would be "very difficult if not impossible" to get an unbiased jury pool.
"The unwillingness of some jurors to focus on the evidence and follow the jury instructions weighs heavily in the ... decision that a retrial in this district is not in the public interest," Starr's motion said.
Reached by phone at her parents' home in Camden, McDougal, 44, said she is "grateful" for all the help she's gotten but "still angry" at Starr.
"My father's in the hospital with a possible stroke, and my mother just had quadruple bypass surgery, and doctors are saying it's probably due to the stress," McDougal said. "I think the taxpayers should have their money back, and I should have my life back."
On April 12, jurors in the Little Rock courtroom of U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. deadlocked on the contempt charges against McDougal. They acquitted her of one count of obstruction of justice.
The charges resulted from McDougal's refusals to answer questions during two appearances before a grand jury investigating President Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Whitewater, the failed Ozarks land deal in which the Clintons were partners with McDougal and her late ex-husband James. A federal judge had granted her immunity and ordered her to answer the questions.
In a defense that focused on Starr and his tactics, McDougal argued during her five-week trial that Starr's prosecutors were interested exclusively in damaging information about the Clintons and that the prosecutors would charge her with perjury unless she invented some.
One witness whose testimony bolstered McDougal's position was Virginia resident Julie Hiatt Steele.
In a decision in a separate case Tuesday afternoon, Starr also cleared Steele of the threat of retrial. The two decisions were made public almost simultaneously.
Steele was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to investigators after she made statements that undercut an allegation by Kathleen Willey, her onetime friend, about an unwanted sexual advance by Clinton. Steele's was the only criminal case to emerge from last year's Monica Lewinsky investigation.
A jury in Alexandria, Va., deadlocked May 7 after a three-day trial, and U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton gave Starr until Tuesday to decide whether to bring the charges again.
Starr announced that he would not, saying in a one-page press release that "the jury's inability to reach a unanimous verdict is a reality that we have taken seriously and respectfully."
Steele's Washington lawyer, Nancy Luque, did not immediately return a call to her office.
Associate independent counsel Mark Barrett, who prosecuted McDougal, delivered the motion to dismiss the counts against the Camden native to the federal courts building in Little Rock on Tuesday afternoon.
"Basically, we gave it our best shot last time," Barrett said, as he boarded the elevator en route to the clerk's office. He said he's not disappointed about the decision -- what was disappointing was the outcome of the trial.
"For me, it's regrettable that we didn't have a verdict the first time around and that we were in the position of facing a retrial," Barrett said.
Howard did not allow prosecutors to interview McDougal's trial jurors, but Barrett said one juror contacted the office.
"The indication was it was difficult for some of the jurors to set aside preconceived ideas and decide the case on the law and the facts," Barrett said, describing what the juror told Starr's office.
One juror, Angela K. Smith of London, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after the verdict that some jurors considered Starr an evil man, and that jurors' impressions of Starr were "absolutely, absolutely" key in the outcome.
"We're acknowledging the reality of a very polarized jury pool," Barrett said. Selecting a jury panel for the trial that ended last month was hard enough, he said, and after all the publicity from that trial, "If there was somebody in Arkansas who didn't have an opinion ... that's just infinitesimal now."
The decision about a retrial of McDougal was a final piece of business for Starr in Arkansas.
Though the independent counsel's office in west Little Rock remains open, Barrett said, he is headed home to Colorado, and his fellow associate independent counsel Julie Myers, his second on the McDougal trial, is in Washington.
W. Hickman Ewing Jr., the deputy independent counsel who oversees Starr's office in Little Rock, is still around, but Barrett said he won't have much of a staff.
Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University, said Starr's decision to drop the two cases shows that Starr "is getting some common sense."
"I think he sees the handwriting on the wall, that he has insufficient evidence and that juries are not favorably inclined towards his prosecutors," Rothstein said. "And perhaps he is beginning to realize that these are rather minor cases, and it appears to be beating a dead horse."
Starr still has two trials involving Clinton friend and former Justice Department official Webb Hubbell, who has already served prison time after a 1994 guilty plea. He faces separate indictments alleging tax evasion and false testimony.
And, former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker's appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis of his 1996 felony conviction is pending. Susan McDougal was convicted of four felonies at that trial, and James McDougal was convicted on 18 charges.
Susan McDougal served almost four months in prison for those convictions, in addition to 18 months behind bars for civil contempt after her September 1996 refusal to give grand jury testimony.
Tuesday, she said her immediate future will consist of being with her parents.
"People don't realize how much of an effect, a tremendous effect, this had on the family," said McDougal's attorney, Mark Geragos. "This has taken a tremendous toll."

This article was published on Wednesday, May 26, 1999

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