Stopped Clock

Dr. MacDonald jailed again

The case has been anything but fast. In fact, the Federal Government's triple-murder charges against Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald have become one of the nation's hardiest legal perennials. The saga began on a winter night at Fort Bragg, N.C., back in 1970. Military police found MacDonald's pregnant wife and two daughters bludgeoned and stabbed to death. MacDonald, then a physician for the Green Berets, lay unconscious in the duplex apartment with 17 stab wounds. He claimed that four "hippie types" had committed the brutal slayings, but Army investigators believed he had expertly stabbed himself with nonfatal wounds to cover a homicidal marital quarrel. The Army charged MacDonald with the murders and then, after more investigation, dropped the case. But in 1975, after a protracted Justice Department inquiry, a federal grand jury indicted the doctor. In 1979, 9 1/2 years after the murders, he was convicted and sentenced to three life terms.

Had his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial been violated? A U.S. Appeals Court thought so in 1980. But last week, by a 6-to-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. Because MacDonald's appeals have caused most of the delay since 1975, the key period for the court was the more than four-year stretch between the Army's dismissal of charges and the grand jury's action. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Warren Burger held that no "right to a speedy trial arises until charges are pending." When the first charges were dropped, the clock, in effect, stopped ticking. During the interim, said Burger, MacDonald suffered no loss of liberty: "He was free to go about his affairs, to practice his profession and to continue with his life."

Less than an hour after the court announced its decision, four FBI agents arrested MacDonald, 38, at his Huntington Beach, Calif, apartment and returned him to Terminal Island federal prison, where he had served a year of his sentence following conviction. After his 1980 appeals court victory, MacDonald was freed on $100,000 bond and has been working in a hospital in Long Beach. Even at this late date, Burger noted that other avenues of appeal remain open to the doctor, particularly under the Fifth Amendment due process clause. His lawyers--along with numerous friends and supporters--are now preparing to pursue them.

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