Jurors Explain McDougal Verdicts

The jury foreman in the Susan McDougal trial says he was put off by the “arrogance” of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s prosecutors and felt that the testimony of Starr’s deputy was evasive.

Donald Thomas also said in an interview that as jurors in the monthlong trial deliberated over McDougal’s defense that she was mistreated by prosecutors, there was “yelling and screaming, and one lady even looked like she was coming to tears.”

The jurors acquitted President Clinton’s former Whitewater business partner on the charge of obstruction of justice and deadlocked on two counts of criminal contempt for her refusal to testify before two grand juries.

McDougal evoked some sympathy by crying and enduring five days of questions on the witness stand, Thomas said. But emotions toward her or Starr’s office played no role in deciding the charges, he said.

Prosecutors have said they want to interview the jurors before deciding whether to seek a retrial on the two criminal contempt charges.

Thomas said testimony from other witnesses, especially Julie Hiatt Steele, who like McDougal was charged with obstructing Starr’s probe, convinced some jurors that McDougal’s fears about testifying to a grand jury were justified.

McDougal said she thought she would be charged with perjury unless she falsely implicated the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton in wrongdoing.

“Fear by itself, I don’t think is innocent, but after listening to some testimony from other witnesses, that once again kind of backed up what she was fearing,” said Thomas, a supervisor at a company that manufactures chairs and tables.

“It’s not so much did I think Kenneth Starr was trying to get Mrs. McDougal to lie, it’s just that some witnesses backed up Mrs. McDougal’s story” that Starr’s office “was trying to get her to say something that was not true,” he said.

As for the performances in court, the foreman said representatives of Starr displayed “a certain amount of arrogance,” saying prosecutors “showed more anger or displeasure from things that went on than the defense did.”

Thomas said prosecutor Hickman Ewing’s testimony struck him as “evasive” because his answers “were like a paragraph long.”

Ewing testified that he drafted and circulated inside the office a proposed indictment of Hillary Clinton and that he told colleagues he would have graded her at “about an F” for her July 1996 Whitewater testimony because she said, “I don’t recall” about 50 times.

Thomas also said prosecutor Ray Jahn’s testimony about “developing a witness” gave the impression that Starr’s office used heavy-handed tactics to lead people into saying things.

“I thought you developed an antidote or vaccine, or something like that,” Thomas said. “I didn’t know that you had to develop a witness.”

But juror Angela Smith, who wanted to convict on all counts, said she saw no evidence that Starr’s team acted improperly.

“I just didn’t see a lot that would indicate to me that he was trying to get her to lie,” Smith said earlier this week.

“Every piece of paper they showed said they were seeking truthful testimony.”

A juror who wanted to acquit on all counts, Becky Boeckmann, said Friday that she doubted that McDougal knows anything of value.

Of the prosecutors, Boeckmann said, “I don’t know if harass is a good word. I think they wanted information from her, but I don’t think she had the information to give to them.”

The vote on the obstruction charge on which McDougal was acquitted initially was 11-1, but changed to 12-0 after half an hour, the foreman said.

On one of the criminal contempt charges, jurors first voted, 8-4, to acquit McDougal for refusing to testify in 1996.

A later vote was 7-5 to acquit, Thomas said.

On the second count, for refusing to testify in 1998, jurors voted 6-5, to acquit, with one person uncertain, Thomas said.

The judge told the jury that contempt had to be committed “willfully,” which was defined as “voluntarily and intentionally, and not by accident, mistake or other innocent reason.”

Thomas and others focused on “innocent reason,” deciding that McDougal’s fear of testifying was genuine, strong and supported by others who had encountered Starr’s investigators.