Word: sirica
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...stony-faced Federal Judge John J. Sirica brushed aside all pleas for leniency last week and sentenced the three principal figures in the Watergate conspiracy to at least 2% years in prison. Former Attorney General John Mitchell's face went from pale to a pinkish flush, then pale again, as the grim news hit him. Former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman scowled in anger. Former Domestic Affairs Adviser John Ehrlichman, his cheeks sunken, looked devastated...
...tense 54-minute proceedings in Sirica's Washington courtroom, a lighter sentence of ten months to three years went to Robert Mardian, once a top aide to Mitchell at both the Justice Department and the Nixon 1972 re-election committee. Tight-lipped but known to be seething about the fact that he had been linked in trial with the top three, Mardian bolted through a rear door when the session ended. He will return to his family's construction business in Phoenix while he and the others await the result of their appeals. This process could take...
...four had written letters to Sirica in hopes of avoiding a prison sentence. Only Ehrlichman's new lawyer, bearded, long-haired Ira M. Lowe, revealed in court what his client had pleaded. Ehrlichman, said Lowe, had expressed his "profound regret" for his role in the Watergate conspiracy. Wrote Ehrlichman: "I have been found to be a perjurer. No reversal on appeal can remove the stigma." Lowe said that Ehrlichman had asked to be allowed to spend his sentence working with 6,000 Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, using his legal talents to help them with land-use problems...
...former President for Haldeman's fate, adding: "Whatever Bob Haldeman did, so did Richard Nixon; Nixon has been freed of judicial punishment, yet Bob Haldeman has had to endure agony and punishment by trial and conviction." Since Nixon had been pardoned, Wilson implied, Haldeman should go free. Sirica was unmoved by that argument...
While sentences of up to 25 years could have been given by Sirica, the terms of 2% to eight years were the stiffest yet accorded anyone who participated in the scandal, except for the actual Watergate burglars. The sentences preclude any parole before the 2½ years are served, although all four will have the right to seek a reduction in sentence. Such motions by some of the confessed conspirators who testified against the four, including John Dean, Jeb Stuart Magruder and Herbert Kalmbach, led to their early release by Sirica. But he is not expected to feel similar sympathy...