Jury Begins Deliberating Fate of Hedgecock in Retrial

Roger Hedgecock’s political and legal fate was in the hands of the 12 most important voters he has ever faced as jurors in the San Diego mayor’s felony conspiracy and perjury retrial began deliberations Thursday.

The jury began pondering its verdict early in the afternoon on the 15 felony charges and single misdemeanor count facing the mayor soon after Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Wickersham told the jurors that evidence in the nine-week trial proves that “there is no reasonable doubt” that Hedgecock willingly accepted illegal personal and campaign financial aid from several of his closest backers and then intentionally falsified public disclosure statements to conceal those transactions.

Waiting Time

Hedgecock, who faces likely ouster from office if convicted on any of the felony charges, said after Thursday’s court session that waiting for the eight-woman, four-man jury’s decision “is almost like Election Day.”

“We’ve done our best and now . . . there’s nothing more for me to do but wait for the voters to come back with the verdict,” said Hedgecock, whose first trial ended in a mistrial last February with the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of conviction. Hedgecock, a 39-year-old moderate Republican elected in May, 1983, to succeed Pete Wilson after his election to the U.S. Senate, was easily reelected to a full four-year term last November, seven weeks after being indicted.

During his closing argument, Wickersham led jurors through a maze of transactions that he argued demonstrate that Hedgecock “received . . . and systematically covered up” alleged illegal financial aid in the early 1980s from Nancy Hoover and J. David (Jerry) Dominelli, former principals in the now-bankrupt La Jolla investment firm of J. David & Co., in order to win the 1983 mayoral race and to remodel his house.

House Renovation

Prosecutors allege that illegal donations from the two former J. David executives were funneled to Hedgecock’s 1983 campaign through a political consulting firm owned by Tom Shepard, a close friend of the mayor. In addition, Wickersham charges that Hedgecock relied on unreported J. David funds to extensively renovate his house.

Hedgecock, however, has described the more than $360,000 that Hoover and Dominelli pumped into Tom Shepard & Associates in 1982 and 1983 as a routine business investment, adding that he borrowed and repaid $130,000 to Hoover for the house renovation project. Hoover, Dominelli and Shepard will be tried separately later as alleged co-conspirators.

Defense attorney Oscar Goodman, who called no defense witnesses to testify in the case, told the jurors that if they apply their “common sense” to the case, they “will see that it all fits together innocently.” Hedgecock’s personal and political financial history “looks bad (only) when you look at things out of context,” the defense attorney added.

“It is our position that as to every piece of evidence in the case, our cross-examination of their witnesses established a reasonable inference which can be drawn pointing to innocence,” Goodman concluded.