Hale Trial Delayed Until Summer

Jurors in the state case against David Hale were dismissed April 30 after a judge declared a mistrial because of the Whitewater figure's prolonged health problems.

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Pulaski County Circuit Judge David Bogard said Hale's ailments, which have delayed his trial, were imposing an unreasonable burden on jurors. Bogard called jurors to court to tell them they were off the case, then set jury selection for a new trial to begin July 8.

Hale lawyer David Bowden, who had argued against the mistrial, said he might try to block the rescheduled trial with a claim that Hale was unconstitutionally being subjected to double jeopardy.

Hale was hospitalized at Baptist Medical Center after he complained of heart troubles. He went to the hospital about an hour before opening arguments were to start in his trial.

He is charged with causing a false or misleading statement to be filed with state insurance regulators about the solvency of a burial-insurance company the state says he owned.

Bowden said Hale should be healthy enough for trial by the end of May. But Prosecutor Larry Jegley, who asked for the mistrial, has said one of his witnesses cannot return from Africa to Arkansas until July because of business concerns.

The judge said there was no guarantee that Hale would be healthy for trial anytime in the near future.

Hale was one of the main witnesses in the 1996 Whitewater trial of then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and President Clinton's business partners, James and Susan McDougal. All three were convicted.

More recently, Hale has been in the news because of allegations that he was paid by a conservative publisher while cooperating with Whitewater prosecutors.

Hale served 21 months of a 28-month sentence after pleading guilty to fraud and was released in March. He remains on three years' probation. He had argued that immunity granted in his federal plea agreement should have shielded him from state prosecution. But a half-dozen courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected that argument.

Hale was charged in the state case in July 1996, but his trial has been delayed because of health reasons and numerous procedural battles.