Politics

Starr Suffers Another Setback

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

May 6, 1999 / 6:25 PM EDT / CBS

Independent Counsel Ken Starr suffered his second courtroom reversal in a month when a judge declared a mistrial in the Julie Hiatt Steele case.

Steele was accused of obstructing Starr's investigation of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky by giving false testimony about Mr. Clinton's alleged sexual advance on former White House volunteer Kathleen Willey.

Jurors in federal court in Alexandria said they were "hopelessly deadlocked" Friday on all four charges against Steele. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton then declared a mistrial.

It was the second time in a month that Starr's prosecutors were stymied in efforts to punish witnesses they alleged hindered his investigation.

In April, a jury acquitted Whitewater figure Susan McDougal on one charge and deadlocked on three others. McDougal was prosecuted for refusing to give grand jury testimony in the investigation of her former Whitewater business partners, the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Starr must now decide whether to retry or drop the Steele and McDougal prosecutions.

"It would be nice to get a decision" from a jury so that prosecutors can "move on to other areas" of the investigation, said Starr deputy Jay Apperson.

"I think it's time to celebrate," Steele said outside the federal courthouse. "It's time to start my life again."

CBS News Correspondent Phil Jones reports that Steele was the only person criminally prosecuted by Starr's office in the Clinton sex and perjury scandal -- even though she was only remotely connected to the case.

At the trial, Willey testified that she had told Steele on numerous occasions about the incident soon after it allegedly happened in 1993. But Steele claims she told investigators she first heard about the alleged encounter four years later.

Starr's prosecutors argued that Steele lied and they put four of her former friends on the stand to testify that Steele had told them about Willey's claims before 1997.

Willey first told her story publicly to Ed Bradley on CBS News' 60 Minutes. Willey claimed she met with the president to ask for a job and during that meeting there was a hug -- a kiss -- and more.