House Legal Eagles Land in Impeachment Nest

They still talk about their big wins, such as the mass murderer, the worst in Tennessee history, caught and convicted.

The congressman with the last name Swindall, jailed for laundering cash.

And the militant white supremacist--the leader of an outfit called the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord--who got 20 years for racketeering.

The 13 House members prosecuting the impeachment case against President Clinton trade tall tales from their days in the courtroom. But it remains to be seen how such long-settled cases in far-flung courtrooms will aid the lawmakers as they prepare for what is being called the trial of the century.

The House prosecution team includes legal eagles with big-time convictions and those who will make their prosecutorial debuts with the case of United States House of Representatives vs. William Jefferson Clinton.

Their war stories stretch back over the decades. Though some boast of their victorious verdicts, not all of their courtroom encounters have gone according to plan.

One had his case criticized by a judge as weak and confusing. Another began prosecuting an innocent bystander. A third had his big fish--a congressman--get away.

“Intellectual diversity” is what Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who handled mostly insurance cases in his lawyer days, says he was looking for in assembling the 13 impeachment “managers” out of the 21 Republicans on his committee.

Trial experience? “That helps,” Hyde said.

Their challenge now is to coalesce into an effective team against crack White House lawyers Charles F.C. Ruff, a Watergate veteran, and David E. Kendall, the president’s smooth-talking private attorney.

Although all are eager to do so, only one among the prosecutorial team has convicted a Clinton.

Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) put away the president’s brother, Roger, on drug charges in a case that the then-governor told Hutchinson helped straighten his sibling out.

“That wasn’t my biggest case,” Hutchinson, a former U.S. attorney, sniffed last week.

The big one, he said, was the 1985 prosecution of James D. Ellison and six of his white supremacist cohorts, whose remote mountain compound was raided by hundreds of state and federal agents in camouflage.

Among those tapped for actual litigating is Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), a former prosecutor and judge who, though among the most junior members of the Judiciary Committee, is considered a rising star.

One of his most memorable trial experiences, he recounts, is a day back in 1990 when, as a young Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, he rose for his closing argument. Instead of speaking, he pulled two six-packs from his briefcase and poured out 10 cups of beer.

There before the jury was the amount consumed by the defendant before he plowed over four victims. Rogan snapped his fingers to demonstrate how quickly their lives ended, and sat down.

Rogan said he learned from his mentors at the district attorney’s office that the most important thing in handling a case is not winning but doing the right thing. “If the president is able to rebut this evidence, he is entitled to a verdict of not guilty,” Rogan allowed.

Just after the drunk-driving case, the UCLA Law School graduate and one-time gang prosecutor was tapped by then-Gov. George Deukmejian for a seat on the Glendale Municipal Court. At 33, Rogan became the state’s youngest judge.

But he left the district attorney’s office with mixed feelings, saying at the time that he thought he had one more big case in him. “This is not what I had in mind,” Rogan said last week.

One of Rogan’s roles may be assisting Hyde in delivering the crucial closing argument of the case. Needless to say, he will not be repeating his mime.

“I’ll say a word in this one,” he quipped.

Also on the trial team is Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who as a U.S. attorney in 1989 won the conviction of a Republican congressman, Pat Swindall, for lying to a grand jury about a scheme to launder illegal drug profits.

Even as he won a huge victory, Barr learned the importance of focusing on the little things. The judge in the Swindall case threw out one of the 10 indictments and scaled back others for being redundant or immaterial as he grumbled about the government’s case. A subsequent appeal chipped away at the case still further, although the core charges remained.

Barr, considered a fierce partisan eager to oust Clinton, uses his old conviction of a fellow Republican to counter suggestions that he is motivated in the impeachment case by political vengeance and not by the rule of law.

He finds similarities between his old case--which he managed but did not actually argue in court--and his current one, both of which grew out of secret tape recordings.

“You have large amounts of evidence to organize, the same statutes of perjury and obstruction, and the political dynamic to be sensitive to,” Barr said. “Prosecuting perjury and impeding a grand jury are difficult cases because you have to prove intent. You have to get in the mind of the defendant. That’s tough.”

But Barr also acknowledged the unique nature of trying a case before a jury of senators.

“These are jurors who can dictate how the trial develops,” Barr said. “They can appeal a ruling of the court. One has to be sensitive to the statements the jurors have made about the length of the trial and the number of witnesses. Usually a prosecutor is just trying to keep jurors from falling asleep.”

Barr, though, does not expect any snoozing in the Senate, with so much on the line. “I think we have a very solid case,” he said. “We have a jury that, although large, is interested in hearing what we have to say. I think it’s going to be a very attentive jury.”

Others on the prosecution team include Reps. George W. Gekas (R-Pa.), who was an assistant district attorney from 1960 to 1966; F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who entered politics just out of law school; Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who once served as the chief prosecutor for the Air Force in Europe; and Stephen E. Buyer (R-Ind.), who was legal counsel for the 22nd Theater Army in the Persian Gulf.

Then there are Reps. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.), Chris Cannon (R-Utah) and Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), lawyers all.

Another member, Rep. Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.), says he is drawing on experience from his own cases as a U.S. attorney. The 1992 prosecution of a state judge on sexual harassment charges introduced Bryant to an area of law that is a subtext in the impeachment case, he said.

And the seven-count mass murder conviction of Dennis Harris, Bryant said, taught him to handle complicated, high-profile cases.

“He will serve a lifetime in jail and should die in jail,” Bryant declared after Harris received six consecutive life terms together with another life term plus 30 years.

But the former prosecutor, who served in the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps and taught law at West Point, also knows the sting of a big loss.

He prosecuted former Rep. Harold E. Ford (D-Tenn.) in 1994 on bank, mail and tax fraud charges in a case that foundered from the start. The first jury couldn’t reach a verdict. The black congressman objected to the racial makeup of the second jury panel, prompting Bryant’s bosses at the Justice Department to overrule Bryant and order a third jury.

The outcome was not what the aggressive prosecutor had been gunning for. Bryant quit in protest, leaving himself out of a job at trial’s end and the defendant scot-free.