Jury Deadlocked in Case Involving Starr Investigation

May 8, 1999

Jury Deadlocked in Case Involving Starr Investigation

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Issue in Depth: Clinton Impeachment Trial

By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
LEXANDRIA, Va. -- After jury members twice described themselves as "hopelessly deadlocked," a Federal judge declared a mistrial on Friday in the obstruction of justice trial of Julie Hiatt Steele, the Richmond woman who played a peripheral role in Kenneth W. Starr's investigation of President Clinton.
The mistrial represents the second setback in a month to Starr's office. In April, a jury in Little Rock, Ark., acquitted Susan H. McDougal of one count of obstructing justice when she refused to testify before a grand jury about the Clintons' Arkansas financial dealings.
Like Ms. McDougal, Ms. Steele had attacked the motives and tactics of Starr's prosecutors. The mistrial appeared to startle members of the prosecution team, who seemed confident after the defense abruptly rested its case on Thursday without calling Ms. Steele, or any witnesses, to testify.
Despite more than eight hours of deliberations over two days, the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the four charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements to Federal investigators stemming from what Kathleen E.
Willey described as Clinton's unwelcome advances in a White House encounter in 1993.
In a note to the judge late this afternoon, the jury foreman wrote that they were "hopelessly deadlocked" and "any further deliberations will not change the outcome."
The judge, Claude M. Hilton of Federal District Court, said the foreman had underlined the word, "not," to emphasize the point.
"Well, I will then declare a mistrial in this case," Judge Hilton told the jurors, "and we'll excuse you all."
Neither the foreman nor any members of the seven-woman, five-man jury would discuss their deliberations as they left the courthouse. Afterward, Ms. Steele, 52, beamed, telling reporters, "It's time to start my life again." She said she hoped it would be the last time that shewould have to have her photograph taken on the steps of a court house.
"It's been a long, long road," Ms. Steele said.

Prosecutors declined to say whether they would seek a retrial. And although they also refused to express their feelings about the outcome, their expressions made it clear that the mistrial was a deep disappointment.
"I'm proud of my legal team and the job they did," said one prosecutor, David G. Barger.
The charges against Ms. Steele led to the first and only criminal prosecution arising from Starr's lengthy investigation of the President and his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky. And the she-said, she-said case rested on the jurors' evaluation of the truthfulness of Ms. Willey and Ms. Steele, whose differing accounts of the 1993 episode discouraged Starr from sending the Willey matter to the House of Representatives as part of his impeachment referral.
Ms. Steele testified that Ms. Willey had told her about the encounter with the President on Nov. 29, 1993, several hours after it allegedly occurred. Prosecutors said Ms. Steele had lied when she refused to corroborate it to the grand jury.
But defense lawyers say that Ms. Steele did not hear about the incident until March 1997, when Ms. Willey asked her friend to lie about it to Michael Isikoff, a reporter at Newsweek magazine. During an initial interview with Isikoff, Ms. Steele did confirm hearing about the encounter but later she recanted, telling the reporter that Ms. Willey had asked her to lie about it.
Barger said that Ms. Steele had changed her story because she was motivated by money. Ms. Steele sold a photograph of Ms. Willey and the President to The National Enquirer for $7,000.
"She was willing to make money off her friend," one prosecutor, Stephen Binhak, said in his closing argument. "Selling the story is what defendant Steele wanted all along."
Convicting Ms. Steele was clearly a priority for Starr, who had six members of his office sitting behind two prosecution tables in the courtroom all week. By contrast, Ms. Steele had three defense lawyers seated with her. Starr, who was traveling in Florida, was informed of the mistrial by a deputy independent counsel, Jay Apperson.
Had she been convicted, Ms. Steele the divorced mother of three, including an 8-year-old son, faced a maximum of 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.
Prosecutors said in the trial that Ms. Steele had sought money from tabloids partly to create an "education fund" for her young son.
For 20 years, Ms. Steele and Ms. Willey were close friends in Richmond, but they have been pitted against each other in an escalating battle since the summer of 1997. Their deep animosity for each other was on display this week, as Ms. Willey shot angry glances toward Ms. Steele, who sat several feet from the witness stand.
Although it appeared the case could possibly be a forum for one final performance from the scandal's major figures, such as Ms. Lewinsky and Linda R. Tripp, most of the witnesses were friends and acquaintances of Ms. Steele and Ms. Willey. The trial was less a reprisal of last year's voices and instead became a forum for the bitter dissolution of a once close friendship.
Ms. Steele's lawyer, Eric Dubelier, asked Ms. Willey to describe a confrontation with Ms. Steele at a Richmond supermarket over Easter weekend. Ms. Willey acknowledged that she had called Ms. Steele an obscenity.
Which of the women to believe became impossible for the jurors to decide after Ms. Steele's lawyers rested their case without calling her to testify.
Indeed, the jury seemed to want to hear from Ms. Steele when they asked the judge during their deliberations for a tape-recorder to listen to audiotapes of phone messages she had left for a friend. Nancy Luque, the lead lawyer for Ms. Steele, said that her client had been eager to testify but had decided her testimony was unnecessary because Starr's prosecutors had failed to prove their case.
During prosecution questioning meant to assail her credibility, Ms. Willey acknowledged that she had lied to investigators about a relationship she had in 1995 with a younger man. She said she did so because she was embarrassed about the affair. Dubelier, a lawyer for Ms. Steele, made the point that prosecutors could have chosen to revoke Ms. Willey's immunity agreement, but instead they simply forgave her.
"It was the independent counsel, Starr, who betrayed the rule of law," Ms. Luque said in her closing argument. "This is America. They can indict anybody, but only you can convict. Only you can stop this. I think you will."
Although she said in her final arguments that Ms. Steele was hit by Starr's "runaway train," Ms. Luque admonished Ms. Steele outside the courthouse not to say anything about the prosecutors.
Ms. Steele left the courthouse in a blue van, accompanied by her two grown children.

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