McDougal case testimony wraps up

ERICA WERNER
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

The last witness against Susan McDougal took the stand in Little Rock federal court Monday, and jurors examined a few final pieces of evidence, as attorneys on both sides wrapped up their cases in McDougal's month-old criminal contempt of court and obstruction of justice trial.
The attorneys will spend today hammering out jury instructions in a private conference with U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr., and closing arguments are scheduled for Wednesday at 9:30 a.m.
The 20th and final witness was W. Ray Jahn, a former prosecutor in independent counsel Kenneth Starr's Little Rock office who spearheaded McDougal's prosecution on four felonies in 1996.
Testifying as a rebuttal witness for Starr's prosecutors, Jahn contradicted earlier defense witnesses who cast aspersions on Starr's tactics, and swore that all investigators ever wanted from McDougal was "total and complete truth."
McDougal is in court because she refused in September 1996 and again in April 1998 to answer questions before a grand jury investigating President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Clintons were McDougal's partners, along with her late ex-husband James, in the failed Marion County land venture called Whitewater.
Starr's deputies argue McDougal had to answer the questions because a federal judge had given her immunity and told her to. McDougal swears she couldn't, because she didn't know of any wrongdoing by the Clintons and Starr's team would have charged her with perjury if she didn't invent some.
Jahn, who worked under Starr for two years, testified Monday that he bent over backward to assure McDougal he'd accept any testimony she gave, as long as it was true.
"I was trying to avoid exactly the allegations that she later made," Jahn said, recalling his negotiations with McDougal in August of 1996, not long after her felony convictions.
But according to her own testimony two weeks ago, McDougal was not reassured.
When she went before a grand jury in Little Rock the month after a telephone conference with Jahn, she refused to answer questions, and spent 18 months behind bars for civil contempt of court. She also served almost four months of a two-year term for the felonies; Howard released her early because of her back problems.
Cross-examining Jahn, McDougal's lawyer, Mark Geragos, tried to show that when Jahn joined Starr's office in 1994, a strategy was already in place: "Convict Mrs. McDougal and then basically roll her over on the president."
"I knew that was the strategy," Jahn said.
But when Geragos accused him of gunning to convict the president and the first lady and refusing to look for a "not guilty" verdict, Jahn countered, "If that's the final result, that's what we get."
In his first few minutes of testimony, Jahn said that when he interviewed for a job with Starr he asserted that he didn't think convicting Clinton would be good for the country. "I hoped to clear the president," Jahn testified he felt then.
Legal experts say that Howard's instructions to jurors before they deliberate on McDougal's innocence or guilt later this week could decide the verdict, and attorneys for both sides said Monday they anticipate a hard-fought session in Howard's chambers today.
The dispute between Geragos and associate independent counsels Mark Barrett and Julie Myers boils down to whether McDougal's sworn fear of the Office of the Independent Counsel was a legal justification for her failure to obey court orders directing her to testify before the grand jury.
The biggest area of contention, Geragos and Barrett said, is over what Howard will say about the two criminal contempt counts.
Geragos wants Howard to tell jurors they can only find McDougal guilty of criminal contempt of court if they determine she had "something to the effect of bad purpose" in mind when she refused to answer questions.
Barrett, on the other hand, said he will contend today that "there is no just cause, good faith defense to contempt of court."
"We're going to argue very strenuously that that has no applicability whatsoever," Barrett told reporters. "So given that we say it doesn't apply and they say it does, I'd say we're diametrically opposed."
In an interview later, Geragos agreed with his opponent's assessment of their disagreement. "We've got an ocean of difference on that," Geragos said.
After listening to both sides argue their positions, Howard will make a decision and write up the instructions. The jury instruction conference is the rare conferences since the trial began March 8 that has been closed to the public, but the instructions themselves are expected to be available publicly this afternoon.
On the stand Monday, Jahn refuted claims McDougal made during her testimony earlier in the trial.
One was that Jahn himself laughingly told James McDougal in 1996 that Jahn had pursued Susan McDougal's conviction despite knowing she was innocent. Another was that Starr's chief Little Rock deputy, W. Hickman Ewing Jr., told James McDougal that Susan McDougal could "write her own ticket" with Starr's office if she said she'd had an affair with President Clinton. Susan McDougal has denied having such an affair.
Both claims were false, Jahn said.
Jahn spent much of his three hours under oath rebutting testimony the jury heard from Richard Holiman, a Little Rock lawyer.
Holiman testified March 22 about his experiences representing David Henley, one of McDougal's brothers, and Sarah Hawkins, a Little Rock woman who held a top administrative position at Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, a failed business the McDougals owned.
According to Holiman's testimony, both Henley and Hawkins were harassed or intimidated by Starr's office. Jahn defended his office's actions, saying both were treated correctly.
Holiman was in the federal courts building Monday because Geragos was considering calling him back to the stand to rebut Jahn. Geragos didn't call him, but after Holiman learned the substance of Jahn's testimony about Hawkins, he called reporters to respond.
"The woman is innocent, always was, never did anything wrong," Holiman said of Hawkins, who was never charged with any crime.

This article was published on Tuesday, April 6, 1999

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