William Hungate, 84; sponsored element of Nixon impeachment

William Hungate, 84, a former federal judge and Missouri congressman who sponsored one of the articles of impeachment against President Nixon, died Friday in St. Louis of complications from surgery after a blood clot was discovered in his brain, his family said.

A Democrat, Hungate represented Missouri’s 9th District from November 1964 to January 1977.

He sponsored the second article of impeachment against Nixon before the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate proceeding. Approved by the panel July 29, 1974, it said Nixon repeatedly failed to carry out his duty to uphold the law.

Hungate was chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on criminal justice, which investigated the presidential pardon of Nixon by his successor, President Ford.

The new president gave sworn testimony before the subcommittee in October 1974, the first time a sitting president had given such testimony.

The subcommittee then voted 6 to 3 not to pursue the matter further, with Hungate voting with the majority.

The next year, Hungate announced that he would not seek another term in 1976. He said that the pressures of the job had sapped his enthusiasm and that politics had gone “from the age of Camelot, where all things were possible, to the age of Watergate, when all things were suspect.”

Hungate served as a judge for the U.S. District Court in St. Louis from 1979 to 1992. During his tenure, he approved a consent decree for a voluntary school-desegregation plan in 1983 that allows black students from St. Louis to attend suburban school districts.

A native of Benton, Ill., Hungate graduated from the University of Missouri and Harvard Law School. He was an infantryman during World War II and received a Bronze Star.