Word: sirica
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...Nixon pardon immensely complicated Federal Judge John J. Sirica's task of selecting a jury in the conspiracy trial of five Nixon associates, chief among them H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell. Defense attorneys often argue that pretrial publicity may prejudice jurors against their clients; in this case, the pardon created sympathy for the defendants. Many prospective jurors expressed doubts that Nixon's men should be convicted if their leader escaped trial...
Short Leash. Once the jury was chosen, Judge Sirica unsealed a number of previously submitted defense motions calling for Nixon's testimony at the trial. In their motions, both Haldeman and Ehrlichman contended that they had urged Nixon, in unrecorded conversations, to tell the full truth of Watergate rather than conceal it. That runs counter to their prevailing advice as expressed in published White House tape transcripts. Sirica is expected to reveal this week what he intends to do about the claim of Nixon's lawyers that he is too ill to testify. Sirica can appoint other doctors...
...critical to get his guilty plea and his cooperation. On Oct. 19 Neal went to court to hear Dean plead, then announced his own resignation. His assistants, Richard Ben-Veniste, 31, and Jill Wine Volner, 31, performed admirably in the many and complex preliminary hearings in John Sirica's courtroom. Still, as a prosecution staffer observed, "for the biggest trial of all, you want someone out there with a little gray in his hair...
...lack of knowledge about what was really going on. John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman and John Enrlich-man appear to be in much weaker positions, especially if their attorneys fail to block introduction of the tapes. But at every opportunity their lawyers will seek to provoke the prosecution or Judge Sirica into reversible error. Neal intends to be continually on guard; the most vicious prosecutor who ever lived can do no less...
...Woodward, Carl Bernstein, John Sirica, Sam Ervin, Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, Peter Rodino--two months ago, they too probably thought that ending Nixon's public career was the best thing they ever did. But now there are rumblings of another Nixon resurrection, as improbable as his climb from the humiliating loss to Brown in 1962 to the presidency in 1968. Most of the noise seems to be coming from San Clemente, but it bears monitoring, given Nixon's uncanny ability to worm his way back into the public's good graces after suffering through devastating scandals...