The Law: Fear of High Places

Off and on through his two trials for perjury and obstruction of justice, Lawyer Roy Cohn kept complaining that people in "high places" (meaning mainly Old Enemy Bobby Kennedy) were "out to get him." They didn't. Last week Senator Joe McCarthy's former committee counsel was acquitted on all counts in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The jury did not buy the Government claim that Cohn had tried to quash an indictment against some stock swindlers and later lied about his activities to a grand jury.

Cohn's acquittal may be cited by some lawyers to show why prosecutors mortally fear mistrials. After the first courtroom conflict last April, the jury was on the verge of convicting Cohn when the father of one of the jurors suddenly died. The judge excused the juror; as a result, the trial turned into a mistrial (TIME, May 1).

The Government moved for a speedy return to court, but haste was no help. The prosecution had already sprung its surprises; now the defense was doubly prepared. As a result, the second trial was essentially a rerun of the first, with the same cast of characters (though the witnesses appeared in different order); the same charges and countercharges were rehashed in infinite detail. The first time the jury was out for four days; this time they took only nine hours.

His second time before the bar, Roy Cohn got another break. Unlike Sam Sheppard (see above), he never had to worry about an overzealous and unfriendly press. Reporters rarely got near him. At the outset of the trial, Judge Dudley Bonsal warned jurors to avoid reading controversial stories about Cohn and not to see Point of Order, the documentary film on the Army-McCarthy hearings in which Cohn starred. Judge Bonsal refused to let newsmen into the well of the court during recess to talk to witnesses or counsel, and he scolded those papers that printed the names of the jurors. Cohn hardly got a front-page headline until the day he was acquitted.