The Stingers Get Stung

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A jury acquits De Lorean, criticizing his prosecutors instead

The plot was as convoluted as any on Dynasty. The tanned, silver-haired protagonist might have just walked off the set of Dallas. But the moment of melodrama at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles last week would have strained credulity on any prime-tune soap opera. Twenty-two months after he was arrested, and five months after his sensationally publicized trial began, renegade Auto Manufacturer John Zachary De Lorean, 59, his hands clasped in front of him as he leaned back in a beige swivel chair, heard a jury of six men and six women declare him not guilty of conspiring to possess and distribute cocaine. "Praise the Lord," proclaimed the born-again defendant.

Cristina Ferrare, De Lorean's fashion-model wife, who seemed to wear a different designer outfit on each of the trial's 62 days, ran to the phone to call 13-year-old Zachary De Lorean. "We won, we won," she sobbed. "Honey, it's all right, it's all fine. I'm crying because I'm happy." The jury had taken 29 hours over seven days, reading transcripts, talking and finally crying, to reach its verdict. They were split on whether De Lorean engaged in a criminal conspiracy, jurors later said, but unanimous in deciding that even if he had, he had been improperly entrapped by the Government's elaborate sting operation. They made their decision on the first ballots.

"I am shocked and surprised," said Federal Prosecutor Robert Perry. Certainly the Government had seemed to have a firm case going into the trial. De Lorean had been arrested in a hotel near the Los Angeles airport only minutes after gleefully poking a suitcase full of cocaine and proposing a toast to the success of the deal. "It's better than gold," he had gloated in a scene taped by Government agents that was replayed repeatedly in court and on nationwide television. It seemed to support the Government's contention that De Lorean was a willing participant in the drug deal, which involved 220 Ibs. of cocaine worth $24 million. Prosecutors had described him as a jet-setting profligate with "the conscience of a tomcat" who "shook hands with the devil."

De Lorean's shrewd and crafty defense attorneys, Howard Weitzman and Donald Rée, maintained a similar high pitch of righteous indignation throughout the trial. They portrayed their client as an embattled entrepreneur seeking to fulfill the American dream, a man himself the victim of a giant conspiracy: "Lured, lied to and pushed" into a trap set by Government agents who were "on a headlong rush to glory." The tactic was to put the Government on trial, and it worked. De Lorean never took the stand. Nor did his lawyers ever make a direct defense on the grounds of entrapment, which might have required an admission that De Lorean had committed a crime.