Nearly 100 Jury Instructions Accepted in Mayor’s Trial

Following approval of the last of nearly 100 jury instructions on Thursday, attorneys in the felony perjury and conspiracy trial of Mayor Roger Hedgecock will begin closing arguments in the controversial case next week.

The closing arguments had been tentatively scheduled to start Thursday afternoon, but Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr. acceded to a request by Assistant Dist. Atty. Richard D. Huffman to postpone the summation speeches until Monday to give him additional time to study the complex jury instructions approved over the last four days. The instructions concern key points of law and evidence in the case, and will be read to the jury by Todd just before it begins deliberating.

Huffman also had expressed concern that, because the trial is not in session on Fridays, there would have been a three-day break between his closing argument and that of defense attorney Michael Pancer under Todd’s proposed timetable. Todd agreed that “the issues would be more fairly presented” if the two sides’ closing arguments are “presented . . . consecutively without a break.”

Both attorneys estimated that the closing arguments could last as long as 10 hours, after which Todd will read the lengthy instructions to the jury--a process that also will take several hours. That means that the six-man, six-woman jury probably will not begin its deliberations until late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Prosecutors have accused Hedgecock of conspiring with former J. David & Co. principals Nancy Hoover and J. David (Jerry) Dominelli in a scheme to funnel tens of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions to his 1983 campaign via a political consulting firm owned by Tom Shepard, a close friend of the mayor. The perjury charges facing Hedgecock stem from prosecutors’ allegations that he intentionally falsified personal and campaign financial disclosure statements to conceal those and other transactions.

In response, Hedgecock has characterized the more than $360,000 that Hoover and Dominelli invested in Tom Shepard & Associates as a “routine business investment” designed primarily to help Shepard start his own business, not to get Hedgecock elected mayor. The errors and omissions on his financial reports, Hedgecock contends, were inadvertent ones.

The four-day period during which Huffman and Pancer debated over the proposed instructions before Todd is, by comparison to other cases, extraordinarily long--a reflection both of the Hedgecock trial’s complexity and of the scarcity of previous prosecutions under the Political Reform Act to serve as legal guideposts.

“What we’ve been doing, basically, is deciding . . . what the law is,” said Huffman, who added that he had never spent more than one day on jury instructions during his 20-year career, even in capital punishment cases. Pancer added that jury instructions had been agreed upon “in a matter of hours” in every other case in which he has participated.

Most of Thursday’s court session was devoted to debate over a series of so-called defense “theory instructions” that encompass some of Hedgecock’s major contentions in the case. Under a state Supreme Court ruling, judges are obliged to read jury instructions based on evidence that a defendant claims disproves the charges facing him or at least casts reasonable doubt on his guilt.

The legal and verbal jousting between Huffman and Pancer over the proposed “theory instructions” followed a consistent pattern, with the defense attorney seeking to persuade Todd to frame the instructions in terms most favorable to Hedgecock’s position and the prosecutor striving to keep the phraseology as nonpartisan as possible.

For example, Pancer and defense co-counsel Sheldon Sherman proposed one instruction relating to the prosecution’s contention that Hedgecock intentionally did not report his sale of a $16,000 promissory note to Hoover on his 1982 financial disclosure statement.

The defense’s proposed instruction stated that jurors, in determining whether prosecutors had proved that allegation, could consider two of Hedgecock’s explanations for why he did not believe it was necessary to report the sale --notably, that he had already reported the note’s value on his 1981 financial statement and that he believed “he received no income from the sale” because it had been sold for the same amount he had invested in it.

Todd left those details in the instruction, but, at Huffman’s request, deleted several phrases slanted toward the defense, such as one that told jurors that, if they believed Hedgecock’s explanations, they then “must acquit the defendant.”

Another passage that Huffman convinced Todd to remove from the instruction read, “Evidence that Roger Hedgecock amended his 1982 annual statement to show the $16,000 six months prior to the filing of the indictment can be considered by you as evidence of good faith.”

“I don’t care if (Pancer) says that to the jury, but I don’t want you saying it,” Huffman protested to Todd. With little variation, that phrase was repeated by Huffman numerous times during Thursday’s legal maneuvering.

Huffman also complained that Pancer was attempting to “have the judge make . . . his (Pancer’s) final arguments,” and expressed concern that Todd’s reading of some of Pancer’s proposed instructions would “give veracity” to the defense’s positions.

“I don’t mind what the defense counsel argues,” Huffman said outside the courtroom. “But when . . . those theories . . . come from the person in the black robe, jurors think that’s the law.”

Another instruction approved by Todd, after a lengthy editing process, focused on the defense’s central argument that Hedgecock had no obligation to report certain expenses spent by Shepard’s firm during the 1983 mayoral campaign that prosecutors have characterized as illegal contributions.

That instruction specified that jurors could not convict the mayor of perjury in regard to those costs if they conclude that Hedgecock’s campaign had a valid contract with Shepard’s firm and that most of the consulting agency’s expenses on behalf of Hedgecock involved overhead costs that, under the defense’s interpretation of state election law, are not considered political contributions.

Todd also will tell the jurors that they cannot convict Hedgecock of perjury in regard to the investments by Hoover, Dominelli and the J. David company in Shepard’s firm, unless they are “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that . . . Hedgecock knew and believed these funds were earmarked” for his campaign.

At the end of Thursday’s court session, both sides in the case expressed satisfaction with the content of the “theory instructions” that Todd will read to the jury next week, along with dozens of other legal definitions and laws.

“I think the judge put them in a correct form . . . fairly and objectively,” Huffman said.

Defense co-counsel Sherman argued that Todd’s approval of the defense’s instructions demonstrated his recognition of the need “to focus the jury on certain of these issues . . . because of how complicated this particular case is.”

“We feel that we definitely got the best of that part of the instructions,” Sherman added. “Of course, we want everything. But we have to compromise. We’re very satisfied . . . with what we’ve gotten.”