Browning: How to Blunt a Scalpel

"You never can tell what a jury is going to do, but I think we did pretty well." So said U.S. Attorney James L. Browning Jr., 43, last week in an interview with TIME Correspondents John Austin and Joseph Boyce on the eve of the verdict against Patricia Hearst. Browning's courtroom performance at the outset of the trial had seemed unfocused and adrift, but was more calculated than many observers supposed. "We have to prove the case, the defense doesn't," he explained. "That means you have to lay out the facts very carefully and thoroughly in the beginning. That may make you look like you're plodding and the defense is soaring, but we can't prove a case by flamboyance." -

Nonetheless, Browning readily acknowledged his respect for the formidable chief defense attorney, F. Lee Bailey. "He's more articulate than I am," Browning admitted. "He goes for the jugular. He's a 'scalpel' attorney rather than a 'shotgun' attorney. He doesn't scatter his questions; he knows where he is going." On the other hand, Browning added slyly, he knows the "territory" and Bailey does not. He argued that Bailey badly misjudged the jurors' reaction to his scathing cross-examination of Dr. Joel Fort. Denouncing Fort as a "liar" and a "psychopath"--which Bailey did--"may work on the East Coast, but not on the West," said Browning.

"People here are very intolerant when it comes to character assassination."

Browning took care not to bully Patty on the stand. "It would have been a mistake because it would have created sympathy for her." Her coolness under cross-examination surprised him. "She's a very sharp young lady, very shrewd."

The prosecutor also got help from a highly unpredictable source. William and Emily Harris, Patty's most ubiquitous S.L.A. companions and the only members of the guerrilla band still alive, gave a prison interview to New Times magazine in which Emily referred to "a stone relic in the shape of a monkey face" that Willie Wolfe once gave to Patty. "He called it an Olmec or something," she said.

That offhand remark rang a bell with the prosecutor. He recalled that on one of the tapes that Patty made during her S.L.A. sojourn she said that the "pigs" probably had "that Olmec monkey" that Wolfe--who died in the Los Angeles Shootout on May 17, 1974 --wore around his neck. The FBI transcribed that garbled remark as "that old MacMonkey." After reading the New Times article, Browning asked the FBI, on a hunch, whether Patty had a similar Olmec trinket in her purse when she was arrested. The answer was yes. That led to Browning's deft summation ploy when he wondered why Patty had testified that she "could not stand"

Wolfe but, long after his death, was still carrying the tiny totem that he had apparently given her.

Browning contended that things began looking up for the prosecution about midway in the trial--"somewhere between the time the judge allowed us to introduce documents from her 'blank' year [the year before her arrest] and she had to take the Fifth so many times in front of the jury."

What about the impact of the verdict on his future career? "I am not sure. I was told by some people that if what I wanted was a federal judgeship I shouldn't try the case. But I never felt that I could turn over the handling of the trial to any of my deputies."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.