Not long into closing arguments in United States of America vs. Alphonso Michael Espy, even a casual viewer of “L.A. Law” reruns might have realized he was spectator to an act of pinstriped self-immolation.
Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz, a square-shouldered and silver-haired Los Angeles trial attorney, was climaxing a four-year, $20 million investigation with a nearly two-hour summation that bordered on the funereal.
He started low-key and descended into the rhetorical depths with a curiously scattered presentation marked even by misnaming a central witness. Only his bow tie seemed in place.
A District of Columbia jury battled languor after seven weeks of duty, and some nodded off. Smaltz had lost them with stirring declarations such as, “This is not a bribery case. It’s a gratuities case!” William Jennings Bryan this was not.
The government’s fate, probably sealed at some point long before when the jury felt nonplused by the wearying parade of Smaltz’s 70 witnesses, was truly put to rest when defense attorney Ted Wells Jr. gave a bravura closing. It was slightly leaner on facts than oratorical aplomb but perhaps potent (assuming the jury harbored any doubts) in its condescending dismissal of Smaltz.
Against a Pete Rose-like prosecution (lots of singles, a few doubles, little else), Wells went for the fences, calling the entire government case “garbage” and a waste of the time of the good men and women empaneled before him.
Whereas Smaltz stood stiffly at a lectern 18 feet away, at times mishandling a projector as he regurgitated documentary exhibits, Wells used not a note as he prowled inches from the jury box and made the sort of contact with his audience that aspiring actors dream of. The dozing dozen seemed to have been injected with Benzedrene.
The government, of course, still had a weapon via a 45-minute rebuttal. It could have dissected some of Wells’ argument, which included the goofy notion of a Republican conspiracy to get President Clinton by bringing down the first black agriculture secretary.
Instead, it brought the painfully maladroit close of a good fellow, prosecutor Barry Coburn, whose wounded hound dog look and instantly deferential acknowledgments of Wells’ “powerful” closing were tantamount to installing a garish neon sign that declared, “We Surrender.”
Coburn had written out his finale but hoped to recite most from memory. He failed quickly, prompting pregnant pauses as painful as an ingrown toe nail.
To aggravate his travail, Coburn told jurors that the case was not about whether Espy was a bad person or knew he was doing wrong or deserved to be punished.
Huh? Was he playing prosecutor or court-appointed therapist?
Finally, he so mismanaged his time he was left to apologize to the jury for having not gotten to several points he had planned to make. Imagine Tony Gwynn forgetting there were two strikes on him.
Two days later, the jury put Smaltz & Co. out of their taxpayer-funded misery with an acquittal on all 30 counts. The victors were fairly humble, while Smaltz battled credulity.
He asserted how “the actual indictment of a public official may, in fact, be as great a deterrent as a conviction of that official,” a stirring rationale for convening grand juries on every street corner of our morally deficient land.
The media had paid scant attention to the case, underscoring how the key thing here is often not who you are but what you are.
Canned by the White House as Clinton’s poll numbers descended in late 1994, just before the Republican takeover of Congress in the midterm elections, Espy was no longer worthy of much notice.
Thus, even The Wall Street Journal, whose March 1994 story largely inspired the naming of an independent counsel, did not show until the closing arguments, six weeks into the case. It was much the same for other organizations, including The New York Times.
“You can find out who your real friends are when you’re not powerful and can’t do anything for them,” Espy said the next day during a chat with a band of newsies who had actually shown up in court occasionally.
And how many friends did the once-rising black political star, who was the first black congressman from Mississippi and first black agriculture secretary, conclude that he had?
“Very few in this town,” he said.
For sure, his life was altered for at least four years, if not more, by the investigation and by the pragmatic if cowardly Clinton, who canned him but made sure somebody else (then-Chief of Staff Leon Panetta) was the executioner.
Please note how, with his poll numbers up, he has let Labor Secretary Alexis Herman and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, also the subjects of independent counsels, stick around.
Espy has to figure ways to pay some of his estimated $1 million in legal bills and plot out a life. The divorced father of both a college and a high school sophomore back in Mississippi, he’s engaged to be married and finds a return to elective office, or other public post, unlikely.
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He was once considered a future senator from, or governor of, Mississippi. Now, a Martian invasion is as likely, and he seems to know it, despite the post-verdict rush to hail his vindication.
Just as we in the media tend to exaggerate the sordidness of those who are vanquished in court, we tend to amplify the purity of those who emerge victorious. So it probably was last week with Espy.
Amid the visceral rage toward prosecutors unchained, and now laid low like cocky Smaltz, there was little recognition that the former congressman had proven human and, thus, flawed.
The evidence displayed, at bare minimum, a man who had never truly departed the culture of entitlement that pervades Capitol Hill, where too many free trips, drinks and tickets make one forget more humble days.
Yes, he could make a case as to not knowing who was really paying for his U.S. Open tennis tickets and $2,000 worth of luggage from a slimeball lobbyist friend (tickets and bags all expensed by the running buddy).
But, in talking to reporters the day after, he didn’t get much beyond admission that he was “insensitive to impressions of impropriety.”
When I asked why he even deigned to call the chairman of Quaker Oats Co. for Chicago Bulls playoff tickets, or why he sat in the stadium skybox of Tyson Foods and watched an NFL game, he said those were examples of being insensitive to appearances, nothing more.
We could have asked lots of other questions, including about stiffing colleagues who picked up his share of meals to avoid ethical questions, or his seemingly seeking to bureaucratically cover his tracks when investigators became suspicious.
But we didn’t because, well, we, the reporters, are enamored of tales of the wrong man persecuted by the long arm of the law.
We are less intrigued by sagas of the right men who are brought down by, perhaps, overreaching or unfair statutes. We don’t deal well with gray and, to be sure, Espy is not without blame.
As for the prosecutors, the Smaltz endeavor probably will go down as a case study in overzealousness. Even that may be a bit unfair.
He did bring 13 convictions and civil pleas, based on evidence that some companies broke the law by illegal gifts to Espy. He botched several cases, including a failed prosecution of Espy’s brother, Henry.
In the end, Smaltz at least shed light on the cozy dealings one often finds between the regulators and those they oversee.
When the head of a big food trade group took Espy out to dinner several times, there was not the barest hint that the agriculture secretary felt compelled to take out his credit card when the check came (much, much later he reimbursed the association).
There was never any evidence of Espy’s doing dirty deeds for gift givers. Of course, one will never know what he didn’t do, what he didn’t consider.
It’s like the passes reporters can give friends and sources through self-censorship, through what they choose not to cover or mention.
It’s why the lawyers for Tyson, the poultry giant, sat right behind Espy throughout. Make no mistake, they were rooting for him.