Responsibility is the garden variety issue in political trials. It blooms forth from all quarters with many variations.
In this chapter we will examine two types, corruption cases and insanity cases, but responsibility is the issue in diverse political trials. For instance, the parallel libel suits filed against CBS and Time by Generals William Westmoreland and Ariel Sharon, respectively, turn on the responsibility of the generals and of the media.
While the legal agenda in both trials involved the formulation of responsibility for actual malice under the tangle of doctrine deriving from the New York Times v. Sullivan case, another agenda addressed a broader issue of responsibility. What was General Westmoreland’s responsibility in advising or misleading the president on enemy troop strength? What responsibility did General Sharon have for encouraging the Sabra and Shatila massacres? What responsibility had CBS and Time for accuracy? Each of these libel trials reached beyond the issues presented in the courtroom toward more basic political questions: What was the United States doing in Vietnam? What was Israel doing in Lebanon? What were CBS and Time doing in shaping public opinion? That these matters were not settled, that all sides, in fact, claimed victory while they left the legal knot as perplexing a conundrum as ever, should be no surprise.Likewise, the Bernard Goetz subway vigilante case extends the issue of responsibility far beyond an ordinary urban shooting. It concerns responsibility at its most basic level, self-help. The widespread discussion of whether Goetz was justified in shooting four young men who approached/ threatened him on the New York subway rapidly spread across the country. It was hotly debated not only on television but in rural communities by people who had never been to New York or to any large city. The question of responsibility in the Goetz case touches each citizen at the Hobbesian level of fear in a city where life is felt to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan, Ch.
13), because of the danger from either muggers or vigilantes.Some trials raise important political questions not because of the causes involved—there may be none—but because of the individuals. When powerful political figures are tried for bribery or for a breach of ethics, standards of conduct for all public officials are brought to the surface. The lines between what is and what is not allowed are explored in the courtroom and by the media. Whether the verdict comes out guilty or not guilty, the trial itself serves to educate.
In bribery trials the court and the public face a question of responsibility: Where is the line between private life and public duty? The specific facts about the deals cut by an Adam Clayton Powell, Marvin Mandel, Daniel Flood, or the Abscam congressmen fade rapidly in our minds, but the pattern stays. Even when the case does not come to trial but the media have devoted attention to it and a trial looms as a threat, we recognize the problem of influence and its consequences. This happened when the details of payments made to Spiro Agnew were brought to light. The bribes he took as a county executive, as governor, and as vice-president were instructive not only about one person’s iniquity but about the reach of monied influence in all politics.
G. Gordon Liddy, Maurice Stans, John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman were not accused of taking bribes. They did not illegally enrich themselves. If they had a cause it was nothing beyond loyalty to the president. But their trials for the break-in at the Watergate and its cover-up, for arranging “hush money” payoffs, destroying documents, and lying to various investigative bodies taught important lessons in the responsible use of power and in temptations for its abuse. What they did in service to the president challenged the rule of law. Which takes priority, loyalty to the president or to the law?
When loyalty to the president and the rule of law become irreconcilable, a deeper question arises: legitimacy.
Even if White House advisors, cabinet members, and a vice-president are brought down, their trials seem small when compared to the trial of a president. Legitimacy surfaced as an issue during the Watergate inquiries, became the subject for the House Judiciary Committee as it considered the impeachment articles, and would have been the focus for the pending trial of President Nixon by the Senate. It is a question fundamentally different from the issue of responsibility and will be covered in a later chapter, chapter 9.Responsibility is raised in another way in trials not of public officials who take bribes or abuse their office but of citizens who commit public acts for which they may not be responsible. In these contrasting trials the political questions arise because the victim is a powerful figure. In the John Hinckley trial the court, especially the jury, must contend with a knot of responsibility even more difficult than taking bribes or abusing power. Hinckley had no cause, nor did he attempt to enrich himself. He admitted he pulled the trigger, but he maintained he was not guilty because of insanity. Yet since his victim was President Reagan, the trial was inescapably political.