Hung Jury

Grinning widely, James Riddle Hoffa, 44, president-elect of the Teamsters Union, hopped out of a Manhattan federal courtroom one day last week, grabbed the telephone and called his wife in Detroit. The good news from Jimmy: a jury, after a four-week trial, failed to agree on whether Hoffa was guilty of conspiring to tap telephones illegally in his Detroit headquarters between 1953 and 1957.

This brush with the law was mighty close. The jury (seven men, five women) voted 11 to 1 for conviction. Juror Earle T. MacHardy, a suburban sugar buyer who had said on selection that his firm's dealings with the Teamsters Union would not affect the impartiality of his verdict, held out adamantly for acquittal. His reason: the U.S. Government had failed to make its circumstantial evidence stick. Though Jimmy was free to go (on $2,500 bond), he was by no means out of the courtroom woods. Ahead lie: 1) outcome of a suit by 13 rank-and-file Teamsters, who maintain that Jimmy was illegally chosen president of the union last Oct. 4, 2) disposition of a federal perjury indictment, 3) the certainty that the Government will take him to trial again on the conspiracy charge.

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