Crime and Punishment

In five cases, the judicial system yields interesting results

As the U.S. judicial system seeks to match crimes with punishments, it sometimes succeeds with sure-footed alacrity, sometimes fails entirely and sometimes, like a shaggy-dog story, just goes on and on. In five venues last week, the system offered up examples illustrating all of the above.

A RADICAL UNEXPECTEDLY RECANTS

Of the seven political extremists charged in connection with the $1.6 million robbery of a Brink's armored truck in New York's Rockland County in 1981, the most notorious was Kathy Boudin, a member of the violent Weather Underground during the late 1960s. Daughter of prominent New York Civil Rights Attorney Leonard Boudin, she had been a fugitive since 1970, when she fled from a Greenwich Village town house that was destroyed by the explosion of a bomb factory secreted inside. Boudin pleaded innocent to charges of robbery and murder in the Brink's case, in which a company guard and two local policemen were killed. Last week, in a dramatic change of heart, Boudin admitted her guilt and accepted a sentencing deal that will keep her in prison until at least the year 2001.

Three others have already been convicted in the case. The defendants, who were drawn from such other vestiges of the '60s as the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army, claimed they planned to use the "expropriated" Brink's money to establish the "Republic of New Afrika" in the Southern U.S. Appearing chastened but calm, Boudin told Judge David Ritter: "I feel terrible about the lives that were lost. I have led a life of commitment to political principles, and I think I can be true to those principles without engaging in violent acts."

A WITNESS IS CHALLENGED

FBI Agent Benedict Tisa was in his third day of hammering cross-examination by Defense Attorney Howard Weitzman, and he was beginning to get rattled. Tisa had masqueraded as a corrupt banker in the Government scam that snared Auto Magnate John Zachary De Lorean, currently on trial in Los Angeles for conspiring to distribute $24 million worth of cocaine to save his failing sports-car company. Weitzman questioned Tisa about the log he kept of the four-month investigation that culminated in De Lorean's arrest in October 1982. Some of the entries in the 28-page handwritten document were dated 1983. "I may have rewritten some of the entries in 1983," the agent explained. "And you destroyed the original?" Weitzman asked. "Yes," replied Tisa, "a portion of them."

The admission led De Lorean's attorneys to request a dismissal on the ground of destruction of evidence. Tisa returned to the stand the next day and claimed he had not destroyed evidence. "You mean you lied yesterday?" challenged Weitzman. "No, I did not lie," Tisa said, "I was mistaken." He said that he had only disposed of "personal working notes" and that he had accidentally dated some entries 1983 although they were written in 1982. The agent admitted that he had been vehemently chastised by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Perry for his careless testimony the day before. Said Tisa: "I misunderstood what I was being questioned about." Asked Weitzman: "Did you mean you misunderstood the question or you misunderstood the importance of what you said?" After a long pause, Tisa replied, "Both." Judge Robert Takasugi is not likely to dismiss the case on the ground of destruction of evidence.

A SOCIALITE GETS A NEW TRIAL

It was one of the spiciest cases of the decade, and now it may start up all over again. The Rhode Island Supreme Court last week overturned the conviction of Newport Socialite Claus Von Buelow, the Danish-born playboy convicted in 1982 of twice attempting to murder his heiress wife Martha, an ailing multimillionaire, by injecting her with overdoses of insulin.

Von Buelow was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but has been free for the past two years on $1 million bail pending his appeal. The court threw out the conviction on a technicality: police did not have a proper search warrant when they examined a syringe that contained traces of insulin--evidence that helped convict Von Buelow--in a small black bag found in his closet. The case can be retried using legally obtained evidence, but Von Buelow's attorney, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, said he would seek to have the charges dismissed on the ground that the remaining evidence was "woefully insufficient." Said Von Buelow: "I can only pray and hope that everything will turn out all right." Martha Von Buelow, known as Sunny, remains in a New York City hospital, in the fourth year of a deep coma.

A MAYOR IS FORCED OUT

Providence Mayor Vincent ("Buddy") Cianci Jr.'s most prized political perk was a Lincoln Continental with maroon seats and license plates with the number 10000. Last week the sleek sedan shared space next to city hall with a moving van. After nearly ten years in office, during which he was praised for revitalizing the city and tainted by the corruption that surrounded him, the effervescent mayor was forced to resign because of a felony conviction: he received a suspended five-year prison sentence for assaulting a man he claimed was having an affair with his estranged wife.

Cianci's exit capped a tumultuous week in Providence. Public Safety Commissioner Sanford Gorodetsky quit after trying to oust the police chief, Anthony Mancuso, who refused to leave. The city highway superintendent and two public-works employees were charged with extorting payoffs from contractors, bringing to six the total of city employees indicted during the past year. State troopers stood sentry at city hall after city workers were seen shredding documents. In a special election set for July 17, Acting Mayor Joseph Paolino Jr. is considered the leading contender. But the redoubtable Cianci has hinted that he wants his job back, which the law would seem to permit. Cianci told a cheering crowd: "We have not stopped making history yet."

A SENATOR RECALLS A WRONG

Republican Senator Paula Hawkins of Florida was scheduled to make pro forma welcoming comments at the National Conference on Sexual Victimization of Children last week. But the surprising and gripping personal tale she told made her the center of attention. "When I was five years old, I was abused by a neighbor, a man around the corner," she recounted to her 1,300 listeners. "I told my mother. Fortunately, she believed me . . . We went to court, and I was one of the witnesses. But the man was let go. The judge decided that children had to be lying."

Hawkins, 57, said that except for her parents, "I have never told anyone until now, not even my husband." Hawkins described the incident after a brief discussion with Kee MacFarlane, an expert on the sexual abuse of children, who is counseling some of the 125 children who were molested at the McMartin School, a day-care center in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Hawkins, a member of an informal group called the Senate Children's Caucus, thought her disclosure would help parents accept their children's stories of sexual abuse. Said she: "It's bothered me all this time that 'nice old man' got off and went on abusing children.