Will Consider Whether Spy Suspect Was Tricked : Jury Begins Deliberations in Pelton Case

After seven days of testimony--much of it highly technical and involving national security secrets--the jury in the espionage trial of Ronald W. Pelton was asked Wednesday to answer one basic question: Were Pelton’s admissions to the FBI about spying for the Soviet Union made voluntarily, or was he tricked?

At issue were events last Nov. 24 surrounding the interrogation and arrest of Pelton, a former $24,500-a-year communications specialist at the National Security Agency.

The two agents who arrested Pelton, 44, testified that he freely told them about selling the secrets for $35,000. But Pelton contended that he was duped, that the agents led him to believe they were “sizing me up” for a counterespionage assignment.

Met for 6 1/2 Hours

After hearing closing arguments, the jurors deliberated for 6 1/2 hours before breaking for the night. They will resume deliberations this morning.

Pelton is charged with five counts of espionage, involving the sale to the Soviet Union of information about U.S. interception and decoding of Soviet military communications.

In their summations Wednesday, each side set forth passionate arguments to the 12-member jury. Robert McDonald, an assistant prosecutor, portrayed Pelton as broke and desperate, “an American ready to sell out his country” when he made his first telephone call to the Soviet Embassy on Jan. 14, 1980.

McDonald recounted testimony by several of the prosecution’s 15 witnesses, asserting that Pelton knew the information he sold to the Soviets could be used for “injury to the United States or advantage to the Soviet Union.” He called Pelton “very competent, very intelligent,” and “not the type of person who’s easily taken advantage of.”

Focusing on the FBI questioning, McDonald asserted that Pelton was treated with “respect,” that he was always free to leave and that he was “very aware of the possibility of prosecution.”

‘Candid’ Appeal

In a spirited appeal to the jury, Pelton’s court-appointed attorney, Fred Warren Bennett, told the jury that he was being “candid” in calling himself “an advocate for Mr. Pelton.”

He went on to suggest that his client had suffered “psychological coercion” at the hands of FBI agents David E. Faulkner and Dudley F. Hodgson. Bennett urged the jurors to “unring the bell” on Pelton’s damaging admissions if they decided that he had not talked voluntarily. The truth or falsity of the admissions was “irrelevant,” he said.

He implored the jurors to suspend their personal feelings and consider “legal guilt,” not “moral guilt.”

In an effort to show how vulnerable Pelton was to being tricked by the agents, Bennett portrayed him as a heavy drinker who used drugs and was going through a “severe mid-life crisis.”

Bennett argued that the FBI should have questioned Pelton in an office, not at a hotel; that the agents asked him to come to the hotel when they knew he would be alone, that they discouraged him from seeking counsel and that they failed to inform him of his right to remain silent until just before the five hours of questioning ended.

Defense Dealt Setback

Later, in his almost two hours of detailed instructions to the jury, U.S. District Judge Herbert F. Murray dealt the defense a setback, saying that it was not necessary for Pelton to be informed that he could remain silent and the failure to do so was “not by itself a reason to find that the statements were not voluntary.”

The judge told the jurors that there were six factors that they should consider in determining whether Pelton’s statements were voluntary. They included his knowledge of legal procedures and whether the agents used “threats or promises of inducements” in questioning Pelton.

Later, responding to a juror’s question, the judge said one or more of the factors could be used to determine “whether the defendant’s will was overborne” and whether “he was the master of his ship.” In that case, the jury would disregard Pelton’s admissions, which are central to the government’s case.

But before Murray charged the jury, John G. Douglass, the lead prosecutor, delivered a scathing rebuttal to Bennett’s summation.

Recalling that the defense lawyer had “candidly” mentioned his client, Douglass, speaking with soft intensity, said: “My client is the nation,” adding, as he pointed to Pelton, “and that man is not going to walk in this courtroom and trash the interests of that client. . . . “

‘Insult to Common Sense’

He called the defense argument that Pelton did not talk voluntarily an “outrageous insult to common sense.” The FBI agents, Douglass said, “looked at the law, decided what the law required, and they complied with it.”

Douglass denied that FBI agents had advised Pelton against calling a lawyer, saying: “The defense is smoke.”

As for Pelton, who sat impassively throughout the day, Douglass said he had exercised the “essence of voluntarism” in “picking and choosing” what to tell the agents in an effort to make a deal. He said the defendant was “not a babe in the woods. He’s a con artist, a wheeler-dealer.”