McDougal Moved From County Jail to Federal Facility

Seven months after her attorneys first demanded she be moved--and one week after the American Civil Liberties Union joined the suit on her behalf--former Whitewater partner Susan McDougal was transferred from a Los Angeles County jail to the federal Metropolitan Detention Facility.

A spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service said McDougal was picked up from the downtown Twin Towers Correctional Facility and moved to the federal facility at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday.

“It’s clear to me that the U.S. attorney’s office recognized that the holding of her was illegal,” said McDougal attorney Mark Geragos. “As soon as somebody took a detached look at it, they took the appropriate action. There was absolutely no basis to hold her in the county jail.”

U.S. Magistrate Charles Eick on Monday had ordered the Marshals Service to respond to the ACLU suit within 23 days.

In their complaint, the ACLU and Geragos alleged that McDougal was being held in the harshest conditions possible as further punishment for failing to cooperate with Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who has unsuccessfully sought information from her about her one-time land investment partnership with President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But Bert Brandenburg, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, said McDougal’s county confinement was simply a matter of confusing orders from different judges and jurisdictions.

“There was confusion between the federal and state authorities as to when and where she should be moved,” Brandenburg said. “The Marshals Service headquarters became aware of the confusion in the past week or two and began working with the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles to resolve it.”

Since she arrived in California, McDougal’s attorney had argued that his client should have been held in a federal facility because a federal court had ordered her jailed for refusing to testify about the Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater.

McDougal was brought to Los Angeles to answer charges in Santa Monica Superior Court that she stole more than $150,000 from conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife while working for the family.

Although McDougal still faces trial in the California matter, Superior Court Judge Paul G. Flynn in December ordered McDougal released--meaning that she should have gone back into federal custody to continue serving time for contempt, Geragos said.

Instead, she continued to be kept at the county’s Sybil Brand Institute for Women and then, in June, was transferred to the county’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

In both county facilities, her attorneys said, McDougal had been subjected to “abusive and inhumane” treatment, such as being kept in her cell up to 23 hours a day, allegedly for her own protection.

“This is an extremely sweet victory for Susan McDougal, at the expense of the special prosecutor,” said Mark Rosenbaum, ACLU legal director for Southern California. “But this success should not be the end of the matter. The abusive treatment of Ms. McDougal by Mr. Starr’s office must be the subject of a congressional investigation.”

McDougal still faces a two-year conviction for bank fraud in the Whitewater case. She is appealing that conviction.