Wallach Back in Court in Retrial of an Old Scandal : 1989 conviction in Reagan-Era Wedtech case was thrown out two years ago. Federal prosecutors have filed reduced charges.
Seated at the defense table in a Manhattan courtroom immediately behind three federal prosecutors, E. Robert Wallach seems a forlorn figure as he struggles alone to defend himself against the charges left over from an almost forgotten scandal.
The California lawyer is caught in a time warp. Wallach, 59, a friend of former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, won a major victory two years ago when his 1989 conviction on fraud and racketeering charges was thrown out by a federal appeals court on grounds that a prosecution witness committed perjury.
But the government is exercising its right to retry Wallach on slightly reduced charges, and once again the defendant is hearing testimony about events of nine, 10 and 11 years ago when he allegedly profited corruptly from a defense contracting firm known as Wedtech. Voluminous records are being introduced to the new jury, including years-old congressional transcripts on the dusty scandal.
The government has presented evidence again that Wallach received $425,000 from Wedtech executives to lobby Meese as White House counselor and later as attorney general to help win defense contracts for Wedtech, a small, now-bankrupt Bronx, N.Y., machine shop. Prosecutors claim Wallach defrauded Wedtech stockholders by billing the company falsely for $425,000 in legal expenses, a scheme suggested to him by Wedtech officers.
This time Wallach, deeply in debt from past legal fees, is serving as his own defense attorney. And some legal experts say his case is raising questions about the fairness of a system that can put defendants through a wringer for a second time.
“He has been pursued relentlessly,” said Leonard Garment, a longtime friend and former White House attorney in the Richard Nixon Administration. “Why did they have to try him again when the case was so tainted?”
Richard Ben-Veniste, a Washington attorney and former Watergate associate prosecutor, tends to agree, although he maintains that prosecutors “had an absolute right to retry him.” Ben-Veniste said the government is supposed to consider “the seriousness of the offense against what the defendant already has been through, including his legal costs, his age, his health and other circumstances.”
Ben-Veniste, who has no connection to Wallach’s defense, said Wallach’s lobbying of Meese on behalf of Wedtech may have been improper but probably was not illegal.
Chief prosecutor Baruch Weiss flatly declines to comment on the propriety of retrying Wallach.
As Wallach’s original prosecutor, Weiss was rebuked by the appellate court for unwittingly allowing the perjured testimony.
Wallach, in an interview outside court, said “a sense of outrage” has motivated him to persevere through another trial and to reject plea agreements accepted by two associates, W. Franklyn Chinn and R. Kent London.
“The only thing you have in life really is your honor,” he said.
An experienced personal-injury lawyer in San Francisco who never had tried a criminal case, Wallach said he decided to represent himself for the first time “so this jury could get a complete picture of me.”
His retrial was postponed several months while he recovered from a ruptured appendix.
The hardest part about representing himself “is the heavy responsibility I feel, but this time I didn’t want to put it in anyone else’s hands,” he said.
“If I get convicted a second time, I have nothing left,” Wallach said. “I will lose everything, including my livelihood.”
He received a stiff six-year sentence after his original conviction, which was stayed pending his appeal. But he lost his law license until the reversal two years later. Wallach estimated that he has spent in excess of $1 million in legal fees and expenses since his indictment in 1987 and still owes an additional $700,000.
“I’m not trying to win sympathy,” he said, “but most people--including most lawyers--don’t understand what a prosecution like this does to you.”
Anthony Guariglia, a former Wedtech executive, committed perjury when testifying for the government at Wallach’s first trial, but the trial judge refused to allow Wallach’s lawyers to demonstrate it to the jury, the appellate court found. Guariglia’s lies concerned his continuing gambling habits, which appellate judges said should have destroyed his credibility in the eyes of jurors.
After the trial, prosecutors developed further evidence of Guariglia’s lies under oath and he subsequently was convicted of perjury.
More than a dozen other persons were convicted of bribery and conspiracy in the Ronald Reagan-era scandal, including a congressman, some mid-level government officials and several former Wedtech officers. Wallach was only a consultant to Wedtech.
Said Wallach: “The only thing I’m guilt-ridden about is my stupidity and poor judgment in venturing off into the minefields of Washington.”
