O’Connor’s Lawyer Urges Jurors to Send an Anti-Drug Message

The case was about words spoken in the heat of emotion and the damage they can do to a reputation--but a lawyer for actor Carroll O’Connor urged jurors Wednesday to make his slander trial a battleground in the war on drugs.

“You have the power to tell the world that in the United States, a grieving parent can speak out against a drug dealer without being afraid,” said lawyer Lucy Inman in her closing argument, defending O’Connor in a civil lawsuit brought by a man who admits supplying--but not selling--cocaine to O’Connor’s addicted son.

A lawyer for plaintiff Harry Perzigian, however, contended that O’Connor unfairly made his client a target in an anti-drug crusade that tattered his name and stole his peace of mind.

In his closing statement, Allan Sigel urged jurors to “strike a blow for every little guy that’s ever been kicked around by a big guy,” exhorting the jury to find that O’Connor slandered Perzigian. He called his client a modern-day “David” who had taken on a popular and powerful “Goliath.”

As jurors begin their deliberations today, they will be asked to decide whether it is possible to ruin the reputation of a man with a felony drug conviction. They will be told to weigh whether O’Connor was expressing fact or opinion, and whether he went too far by publicly blaming Perzigian for his son’s 1995 suicide.

“A grieving father was using a strong figure of speech to express his outrage over his son’s cocaine-induced suicide,” Inman said.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the veteran actor waved Perzigian’s photograph in front of television cameras, identified him as his son’s drug dealer, and held him responsible for the death of his 32-year-old son.

He called Perzigian a “sleazeball” and said, “We’re gonna get you.” Later, he told a national television audience that Perzigian was “a partner in murder” and “a lawbreaker who caused the death of a helpless addict.”

Perzigian was arrested and convicted of possessing cocaine and furnishing it to Hugh O’Connor on one occasion three months before his death. He was not convicted of selling the drug, and has denied being a drug dealer.

In his arguments to the jury, Sigel said his client had paid the price for supplying cocaine to Hugh O’Connor.

“His price was incarceration,” said the lawyer, walking toward the actor as his voice rose. “It was not Mr. O’Connor vilifying him, day after day after day.”

Perzigian’s lawyer compared O’Connor to his 1970s television character, Archie Bunker, a bigot who often lashed out at his wife, daughter and son-in-law on the comedy “All in the Family.”

“A couple of times in this trial I thought we had Archie on the stand,” he said, noting that O’Connor had made clear his disdain for his client, who had a ponytail at the time of his arrest.

Perzigian, 41, a musician, sat with legs crossed and faced the jury, at times sniffling and wiping his eyes as his lawyer spoke.

Sigel suggested that both the legal system and public opinion had been swayed by O’Connor’s fame. He urged jurors not be be swayed by celebrity.

“I have enough faith in the justice system and the jury system,” he said. “And I finally believe that we’re going to get a level playing field.”

But Inman urged the jurors to “show the same courage that Carroll O’Connor has shown even when his heart was breaking,” she said.

She branded Perzigian a liar. Pointing to enlarged copies of checks Hugh O’Connor had written to Perzigian, she asked jurors to send a message to drug dealers.

Noting that the checks were written during a time when Hugh O’Connor had relapsed into a drug binge after undergoing treatment for his addiction, Inman scoffed at Perzigian’s explanation that the money was for stereo equipment. She urged jurors to consider whether Hugh O’Connor really would have been interested in stereo equipment at a time when he was “delusional.”

“He was hiding in his house. He was poking holes in his couch, looking for bugs,” Inman said.

Perzigian maintained through the trial that he did not sell drugs for a living, but did share them with Hugh O’Connor as a friend.

Sigel repeatedly reminded jurors that Carol O’Connor was on trial, but he spent much of his argument defending his client. He pointed out, for example, that a scale that police found in Perzigian’s Brentwood condo was used to measure vitamins and protein powder--not cocaine.

But Inman stated that Perzigian’s attempts to portray himself as anything but a drug dealer were ridiculous and “insulted the intelligence” of everyone in the courtroom.