A Double Standard

Watergate has pointed out the need for reform of campaign financing, for a check on executive power, for closer congressional oversight of the IRS, FBI, and CIA, for a reassertion and renewed vigilance of our constitutional liberties. But Watergate also has illustrated the depravity of all men and women, whatever their political philosophy. Hubert Humphrey, too, took milk money, and Ted Kennedy has left Chappaquiddick questions unanswered for years. Charles Colson became a Christian during—but not because of—Watergate; but that didn’t stop him from exhausting almost every imaginable legal avenue to avoid prosecution for his wrongdoing. Young adults at Evangelical Fourth Presbyterian Church in suburban Washington assisted in clipping newspapers in an unsuccessful effort to show that publicity would prevent him from getting a fair trial. Eventually Colson’s newly-quickened conscience prevailed and the man Jeb Stuart Magruader called “an evil genius” pleaded guilty to a Watergate crime.

If Watergate has pointed out the need for repentance among our national leaders, it also has exposed the stark inequality in our nation’s administration of justice.

In 1971, Richard Ammidown, a government official, hired Tony Lee, a young black, to kidnap Mrs. Ammidown, rape her, and kill her. The crime took place according to plan. Two days after the Watergate break-in 1972, U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica sentenced Lee to be electrocuted and added on two 15 years-to-life terms to be served consecutively. Sirica, the hero of Watergate, sentenced Ammidown to two consecutive 20 years-to-life terms. Thus, Lee, the hit man, would die; Ammidown, the mastermind, would serve 60 years. The U.S Court of Appeals told Sirica to re-sentence. In recent months he has done so, giving Lee 20 years-to-life on each of three counts with the intention he would serve at least 60 years. Ammidown got 15 years-to-life, and will be eligible for parole in 15 years.

So far, aside from the original defendants, the heaviest penalty for Watergate crimes has gone to Ehrlichman, who got 20 months-to-five years for the Ellsberg break-in. Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, once the nation’s top law enforcement officer, got a suspended sentence of a $100 fine and 30 days probation for failing to testify accurately. Former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew received a suspended sentence of three years, although the Justice Department declared in court that he had received more than $80,000 in payoffs over the years.

The week after Agnew was sentenced, a Justice Department spokesman remarked to me that a Pennsylvania Congressman had received a similar three-year suspended sentence for tax evasion—the clear implication being that Agnew did not receive preferential treatment. I replied, “Yeah, but my best boyhood friend stole a car at 16 and got 10 years and he didn’t even know better—he had no father and his mother, a cleaning woman, had to raise him in an undesirable home.” To which the spokesman replied: “Well, it shows the kind of friends you have.”

Now, Nixon has received a full pardon. Nelson A. Rockefeller said, and President Ford concurred, that Nixon “had been hung, and I don’t see why he should be drawn and quartered.” Former Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson said in recommending no jail sentence for Agnew that the former Vice President had suffered enough.

But so, probably, had Lee and the families of uncounted other poorer, lesser-known defendants.

U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell, in the White House Plumbers Trial for the Ellsberg break-in, got this Scriptural priority of punishment correct. Bernard L. Barker and Eugenio Martinez, “Two little men from Miami,” as their lawyer referred to them, who thought what they were doing would help free their homeland of Cuba, were given suspended sentences. The heaviest sentence went to the man with the most responsibility—Ehrlichman.

Gesell also gave Colson a sentence of 1-3 years for obstruction of justice by spreading derogatory information about Ellsberg. Colson had pleaded guilty, but he sought repeatedly to be spared punishment. Citing Nixon’s pardon, he inquired at the White House about a pardon and filed a motion for a reduction of sentence in the interest of “even-handed justice.” If justice truly had been even-handed in Watergate, one wonders how much heavier a sentence Colson would have received.

Thus, Watergate, and now, Nixon’s pardon, have raised basic questions about administration of justice:

—How fair is the sentencing procedure, which, in a perverse reversal of logic and Scripture, shines more favorably on the wealthy and the well-placed than it does on the downtrodden and the poor?

—How fair is plea-bargaining, in which a defendant pleads guilty to a lesser crime in exchange for the prosecution’s dropping of other charges? The wealthy, who can hire better lawyers, are able to negotiate such a deal more frequently than others.

Christ spelled it out clearly in his parable on the steward: “But he who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating. Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much, they will demand the more” (Luke 13:48).

Wesley Pippert was a reporter and writer for United Press International when this article appeared. He covered the Senate Watergate Hearings for UPI, and was also the author of Memo for 1976 (IV Press).