Steele trial ends with jury 'hopelessly deadlocked'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Copyright © 1999 Associated Press.
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A jury deadlocked Friday in the trial of a Virginia woman accused of undercutting the testimony of a presidential accuser; the impasse created the second setback in a month for Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel.
After jurors declared that they couldn't reach a verdict in eight hours of deliberations, a federal judge declared a mistrial in the case of Julie Hiatt Steele, who was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. Steele's story undercut the allegation by Kathleen Willey, her one-time friend, that President Clinton made an unwanted sexual advance.
Steele, an outspoken critic of Starr's investigation, said she felt wonderful. Starr's prosecutors said they were weighing whether to seek a retrial in the only criminal case to emerge from last year's Monica Lewinsky inquiry.
It was the second time in a month that Starr's prosecutors were stymied in efforts to punish witnesses they alleged hindered his investigation. In April a jury acquitted Susan McDougal on one charge and deadlocked on three others. Starr is considering whether to seek a retrial against McDougal for refusing to give grand jury testimony in the investigation of her former Whitewater business partners, the president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Jay Apperson, Starr's deputy, expressed frustration with the outcome of the case against Steele. She was charged with three counts of obstruction and one of lying to the FBI.
"It would be nice to get a decision" so prosecutors can "move on to other areas" of the investigation, Apperson said.
In a three-day trial, Starr's chief witness was Willey, who alleged misconduct by the president. Assailing Willey's credibility, Steele's attorneys depicted Willey as a publicity-seeking woman who has repeatedly lied.
Steele planned to testify in her defense until Wednesday night, but then her lawyers told her they felt the cross-examination of Willey's credibility had been so effective that the wisest strategy would be to call no witnesses.
People familiar with. Steele's situation said she resisted the idea of not testifying. They said the Steele team finally made the decision Thursday morning not to put on defense witnesses.
Among other reasons, Steele wanted to testify to counter Willey's suggestions that Steele was eager to go to the tabloid press with the story of the Clinton-Willey encounter.
"I think it's time to celebrate," Steele said outside the courthouse. "It's time to start my life again."
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton announced that he had gotten a note from the jury that it was "hopelessly deadlocked" and that "any further deliberation will not ... change the outcome." The word not was underlined, the judge noted.
If convicted of all charges, Steele could have faced up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.
Willey testified that she rebuffed a "very forceful" sexual advance by Clinton and told Steele about the encounter hours after it occurred.
Steele said the first time she ever heard of a Clinton-Willey encounter came when Willey called in March 1997 and asked her to lie about it to a Newsweek magazine reporter.
Prosecutors produced three witnesses who said Steele told them she had known of the alleged Clinton advance before 1997. Each of the three witnesses testified that Steele insisted to them later that she hadn't told them.
Defense attorneys questioned why Willey now remembers the alleged encounter with Clinton and conversations with Steele in much more detail than she did the first time she told the story under oath during a January 1998 deposition for the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.
Trying to explain her state of mind during the Jones deposition, Willey testified that she had been frightened by a threatening encounter two days earlier with a stranger who knew that her cat was missing and her car tires had been slashed.
She also said Robert Bennett, a Clinton lawyer, had suggested that she invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer the questions, which she said she regarded as a "threat coming from the president." Outside of court Bennett denied ever making such a statement.
Trying to depict Willey as emotionally unbalanced, Steele's lawyers made Willey recount a grocery store confrontation when she called Steele by a four-letter word. Willey said that she regretted the confrontation but Steele had been attacking her in TV interviews and public appearances for the past year.
Steele's lawyers also delved into Willey's taking of anti-depressants, including Prozac. Willey said she had been depressed for some time after her husband's suicide, which occurred the day of the alleged Clinton advance.
And Willey admitted lying to Starr's investigators when they asked about a past relationship when she had pretended to be pregnant.
Rather than abandoning their witness, Starr's office gave her a second grant of immunity from prosecution because of that lie.

This article was published on Saturday, May 8, 1999

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