The Stingers Get Stung

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The tapes were compelling yet also confusing, full of implications but apparently not convincing to a jury skeptical about what went before and after each of the scenes. In one videotape, FBI Agent Benedict Tisa, masquerading as a banker, discussed laundering drug money with De Lorean. In another tape, De Lorean told his old acquaintance and neighbor James Timothy Hoffman, a convicted cocaine dealer, that he had backing for the drug deal from the Irish Republican Army. Unfortunately for the Government's case, the tapes lacked one critical element. Missing were the preliminary stages of the probe, thus leaving debatable the essential question of motivation and instigation: Who really set the deal in motion?

Furthermore, the prosecution failed to maintain the credibility of its undercover operatives and informants. Tisa admitted he had destroyed some of the notes from his investigation and had accepted and passed to his superiors false information from Hoffman that De Lorean had a prior history of drug involvements. The prosecution conceded that Hoffman was a paid informer and an admitted perjurer. His claim that he had been approached by De Lorean was undercut by testimony that he had boasted to the Feds as early as 1982, "I'm going to get John De Lorean for you guys ... The problems he's got, I can get him to do anything I want."

The prosecution tried to persuade the jury to overlook the witnesses' apparent character defects. Argued Attorney Perry: "For a plot hatched in hell, don't expect angels for witnesses." But the argument seemed to backfire. The jurors said afterward that they found themselves as disturbed by the Government's conduct as they were by De Lorean's. "Entrapment was a critical issue that had a lot of impact on us," Evelyn Dowell, a homemaker, told TIME. "I thought De Lorean's actions " could be questioned, but I think the Government acted in a questionable manner. Neither side behaved appropriately."

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Takasugi had carefully spelled out the law on this point to the jury. Said he in his instructions: "If you find John De Lorean committed the acts charged, but did so as a result of entrapment, you must find him not guilty." Entrapment results if the idea for the crime comes from Government agents or informants, if the defendant is induced to participate, and if the defendant was not predisposed to commit the crime. According to Clarence Berman, 56, a retired environmental health inspector for Los Angeles County, some of his fellow jurors thought De Lorean was innocent of the charges, but they all believed that he had been entrapped and was, therefore, not guilty.

"This was an attempt to send a message that this type of conduct in investigations and arrests will not be tolerated," Defense Attorney Weitzman declared of the decision. The jurors confirmed that for some of them at least, this was the case. "The whole thing makes me angry," said Juror Jo Ann Kerns, a department-store assistant manager. "What they did to De Lorean could happen to anyone. That's the message. People should understand that." Foreman William Lahr, an insurance claims adjuster, reported that the jury hoped the verdict "would indicate to the Government that they should re-evaluate their investigative techniques."