Mitchell and Stans: Not Guilty

Each of the defendants stood charged with one count of conspiracy, two of obstructing justice and six of committing perjury. The trial took ten weeks and after deliberating 27 hours, the jurors sent word to Federal Judge Lee P. Gagliardi that they had reached a verdict. What it was was clear almost at once: the first two jurors to enter the tense Manhattan courtroom looked directly at former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell and smiled.

"Madam Forelady, has the jury reached its verdict?" asked the clerk. It had, replied Sybil Kucharski, dressed in blue jeans and a gray turtleneck sweater. In a firm, assured voice, she answered "Not guilty" eighteen times as the counts, first against Mitchell, then against onetime Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, were read. When the litany exonerating Mitchell was completed, one of his defense attorneys let out a small whoop of joy and tried to embrace his client; the undemonstrative Mitchell shook him off. "You've got the jury system and it always works," he said calmly afterwards. Stans was less restrained. Eyes moist, he hugged one of his attorneys and later said: "I feel like I've been reborn."

Thus ended a trial in many ways unique in the history of American justice, one whose outcome had been anything but a foregone conclusion, and one whose verdict represented for Richard Nixon the first substantial good news to come out of his Administration's scandals in a long time. Mitchell, 60, and Stans, 66, were the first former cabinet officers jointly to stand trial in U.S. history. The charges involved intrigue, power politics and the clout of big money on the lofty heights of the Government. The 59 witnesses who appeared during 31 days of testimony included two former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission plus such Watergate luminaries as John W. Dean III and Rose Mary Woods.

Making their final summations earlier last week, the lawyers for the defense and prosecution tried to shape the great mass of evidence to their own ends. To defend Stans, Walter Bonner, 48, wore a flamboyant brown and yellow plaid suit, and he brought along a courtroom style to match. Laughing, shouting, waving his arms, steaming with barely controlled indignation, Bonner put on a Chautauqua performance for four hours. He claimed that his client had been unfairly afflicted by the prosecution with the blight of "Vescoitis"--the implication that Stans had been controlled in thought and deed by Financier Robert Vesco. According to the indictment, Stans and Mitchell had tried to help Vesco with the SEC after the moneyman had made a secret $200,000 cash contribution to Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign.

The Damascus Road. The strongest charges against Stans were that he had committed perjury before the grand jury while testifying about the Vesco affair. To explain away two of the counts, Bonner reminded the jury that at the time he had testified Stans had been desperately worried about the near fatal illness of his wife. Bonner inquired of the jurors if they had ever paid a hospital visit to someone they loved who was on the edge of death. "Do you think that would affect you?" he asked.

Then it was the turn of Peter Fleming, 44, to try to explain away the charges against Mitchell. Standing 6 ft. 7 in., Fleming towered over the jurors, attempting to capture the twelve with his assured presence, elegant manner and easy, ingratiating smile. Fleming worked especially hard to dismiss John Dean's testimony against Mitchell--a key part of three perjury counts--by discrediting the former counsel to the President as a man who had already pleaded guilty to helping to cover up the Watergate breakin. Someone was going to have to judge Dean someday, Fleming said. "Is he St. Paul on the road to Damascus struck by the lightning of God?" he asked. Or was he a man who had scrambled frantically to save himself when Watergate began to break open?

Fleming scoffed at the Government's basic charge that Mitchell and Stans had conspired to help Vesco, noting that the financier had clearly got nothing for his money. Seven months after the $200,000 was given, the SEC charged Vesco and 41 of his associates with perpetrating a $224 million stock fraud. "This case is not a case about a fix," said Fleming. "This case is a mess of confusion. This case is conjecture."

During parts of the long trial, Chief Prosecutor John R. Wing, 37, had been outshone by Bonner and Fleming. Younger and less experienced, he also lacked their dramatic flair. But when his time came to deliver the last word for the Government, Wing held the jury's attention from the moment he began. Without using any notes, Wing spent five hours and 37 minutes patiently and skillfully reviewing the Government's case. "What we're interested in, what this case is about, is political power interfering with justice," he said. The defendants were men, he declared, who did not call "a fix 'a fix.' That would be gauche." Instead, they asked for "help" for their friends. But, in the end, Wing's case turned out not to be sufficiently persuasive to the jury.

In a sunlit defense conference room after the verdict, Mitchell and Stans, fully relaxed for perhaps the first time since they were indicted nearly a year ago, talked of their plans. Stans said that he wanted to take his ailing wife off somewhere for two weeks "to get away from the tension." Mitchell wryly suggested that "I think I'll retire to a nice secluded place and buy myself a drink." Asked if his wife Martha, from whom he is separated, knew of the verdict, Mitchell said: "Who?" Both professed having had confidence all along that they would be vindicated. But when Stans was asked if they had truly never been worried about the outcome, he replied with a winner's smile: "If we said that, that would be perjury."

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