Word: sirica
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Hoffar submitted a sealed manila envelope. Sirica directed Court Clerk James Capitanio to read its contents aloud. The reading was swift and spare. First the name of each defendant. Then the number of each count charged against each man in the indictment. After each count, the terse declaration: "Guilty" or "Not guilty." For four of the five defendants, the news was devastatingly identical: guilty on all counts...
High Costs. Judging by earlier sentences given other Watergate principals, especially the one-to-four-year sentence being served by the cooperative Dean, court observers estimate that Sirica, despite his "hanging judge" reputation, will mete out nowhere near the maximum penalties to the newly convicted conspirators. Some forecast a minimum sentence of two years for Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman-double that of Dean's-and a lesser term for Mardian. No date for sentencing has been...
...main ground for appeal will be that massive pretrial publicity, including the impeachment proceedings against Nixon, made a fair trial impossible, especially in such a politically aware city as Washington. Other arguments, especially by Ehrlichman, will be the failure of Nixon to testify because of his poor health and Sirica's refusal to let the trial await Nixon's recovery. Still another basis for appeal will be Sirica's insistence on presiding over the trial after he was so closely involved in breaking the coverup...
...those arguments have serious flaws. When Sirica first questioned prospective jurors, there were some indications that the publicity about Nixon's pardon might actually have worked in the defendants' favor. Originally, half of the jurors said that convicting Nixon's aides would be unfair since their leader had gone free...
Furthermore, even before the trial started, an appeals court in Washington rejected defense contentions that Sirica should not handle the case. The same higher court has already praised his personal questioning of Liddy in the first trial as being a "palpable search for truth ... in the highest tradition of his office as a federal judge." Although he made a few careless remarks out of the jury's hearing in the latest trial, Sirica applied the rules of evidence and argument with some latitude but with an even hand that surprised his critics...