Jury Deadlocks in Campus Protest Case

The trial of 35 students arrested at UC Santa Barbara in a protest over the teaching appointment of a CIA officer ended Friday after the jury declared itself deadlocked.

The jury voted 9 to 3 for acquittal on trespassing charges involving the occupation of Chancellor Barbara Uehling’s office last November, but voted 7 to 5 to convict the nine students on charges of resisting arrest, according to defense attorney Richard Frishman.

Despite the lack of unanimous verdicts, Frishman called the outcome a victory for his arguments that the students’ actions were necessary to prevent a greater harm--that the CIA connection would hurt the university’s reputation and possibly endanger students and teachers.

The use of such political arguments in a “defense of necessity” is rarely allowed in criminal trials.

‘Very Pleased’

“I’m very pleased with the outcome, especially since we we were only allowed to present about half the evidence we wanted to put in front of the jury,” Frishman said. He said Judge Frank Ochoa of Santa Barbara Municipal Court did not permit evidence about the CIA’s alleged covert operations around the world nor allow testimony from former CIA agents. However, the judge did permit testimony about the students’ reasons for the protest.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gerald Alonzo, who prosecuted the case, said a decision on whether to try the case again has not been made.

Alonzo said he did not think that it was appropriate that the judge had allowed use of the defense of necessity. This legal strategy is only applicable when there is evidence of a “great and immediate harm,” which was not present in this case, Alonzo said.

Meanwhile, the protesters won a victory in another arena this week when the faculty of the UC Santa Barbara political science department voted not to renew the one-year contract as a visiting fellow for CIA agent George Chritton Jr. As a result, Chritton’s affiliation with the campus will end next month, according to Margaret Weeks, spokeswoman for Uehling.

30-Year CIA Veteran

Chritton, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, originally was appointed to a two-year term as a guest lecturer as part of a CIA program that had senior agents teaching at four American universities while on the agency’s payroll.

The day after the students’ sit-in, Uehling cut Chritton’s appointment to one year, forbade him to recruit and changed his status to that of a visiting fellow. That change meant he could not teach his own courses but could lecture only if invited into other teachers’ classes where, presumably, his view of history could be challenged more easily. Uehling insisted that she made the change at the faculty’s request, not in response to the student protest.

On a taped message left on his home answering machine Friday, Chritton said he would not talk to any reporters.

Uehling, who testified in the trial, had no comment about its outcome, Weeks said.