Reasonable Doubt

Handsome, young (30) Russian Navy Lieut. Nikolai Gregorovich Redin sat, strolled, fidgeted. A few hundred feet away in Seattle's Federal Building a jury was weighing his acts, his motives, sorting and sifting the thousands of words of evidence, judging him by his looks, his actions. Like many a U.S. citizen before him, Nikolai Redin knew then the excruciating suspense of waiting for a jury to come in,

What would those quiet-eyed men and those neatly dressed American housewives believe of a Russian these days? Would they, as folks did in Russia, believe that any man accused by the Government was automatically guilty? Nikolai Redin waited.

Lieut. Redin, a Soviet Purchasing Commission agent, had been picked up by the FBI just before he and his attractive wife Galina were to depart for Russia last March. The charge: he had bought secret information about the not-so-secret U.S. Navy destroyer tender Yellowstone. His accuser: a man he had thought was his friend, elderly Herbert Kennedy, a marine engineer who worked in the yards where the Yellowstone was built.

Kennedy had testified that Redin had pumped him for information about the Yellowstone, its steering gear, machinery, radar; Redin, he swore, had paid him $250, had told him "Speed counts, it means thousands of dollars."

There was almost no substantiation of Kennedy's accusations. But there was none either, for Nikolai Redin's denials in his halting, faulty English. Yet the American judge had warned the jury it must find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before it could convict Redin.

Redin waited more than 20 hours. Then came the word: the jury was ready with a verdict. They filed into the box, their faces expressionless, their manner grave. The verdict: Not Guilty.

Nikolai Redin grinned, and followed a time-honored American custom. As the jurors walked past him he shook each by the hand and smiled into embarrassed but understanding eyes. Then he scurried through the crowd to a telephone and called his wife.

For the benefit of newsmen around him he spoke in English: "I have told the judge thank you for fair trial given me in United States of America. I shake hands with jurors. And now you pack our things." Galina, who had more faith in U.S. justice, had never unpacked.

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