McNall Associate Won’t Be Retried

Mark Eastman, the only business associate of former King owner Bruce McNall to go to trial in the federal government’s investigation into McNall’s banking operations, will not be tried again, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dorothy Shubin said Thursday.

Eastman, 43, who had been McNall’s general counsel, was tried twice but each time the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

Thirteen other individuals involved in McNall’s businesses, including McNall, entered guilty pleas in the probe. In January, McNall was sentenced to a prison term of 70 months and is serving it at Lompoc federal prison. The others are to be sentenced later this year.

In Eastman’s case, the first jury deliberated for two weeks and deadlocked on the 12-count indictment in April. In the second trial, this month, the charges were reduced to nine counts and the jury deadlocked again.

Said Eastman, whose life has been on hold since he was indicted in October, 1995, “[The case] just became a way of life. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow. I have to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”