Trials on Twin Tracks

By Michael S. Serrill

Two Brink'sprosecutions are drawing to a close

It has been nearly two years since a group of self-styled revolutionaries shocked the nation by holding up an armored truck in Rockland County, N.Y., killing a Brink's guard and, in a subsequent Shootout, two local police officers. It was quickly apparent that the attack was not merely a last violent gasp of the radicalism born in the '60s. Information gleaned from the robbery and murder scenes led police to "safe houses" in Mount Vernon, N.Y., The Bronx and elsewhere, from which they carted away truckloads of evidence. With that material, plus leads provided by informants, police began a nationwide conspiracy probe that is still going on.

Last week the first two trials resulting from that investigation were simultaneously drawing to a close in a Manhattan federal courtroom and in the small (pop. 10,381) New York town of Goshen. Both cases produced some legal melodrama: swaggering political posturing by defendants, protests by their radical supporters, and massive security precautions by officials. But beneath the surface, the trials were also textbook examples of smooth cooperation among the numerous law-enforcement agencies involved.

When the 1981 crime occurred, a federal antiterrorist task force was already in place in New York City and quickly entered the case. Led by Kenneth Walton, No. 2 man in the New York FBI office, the task force eventually grew to number more than 200, as dozens of investigators were drawn into the probe from the New York and New Jersey state police, the New York City police and several Rockland County communities. The investigation has taken task force agents as far away as Mississippi, Texas and California. One continuing focus has been on finding six fugitives named in Brink's indictments. Last week a task force raid on a District of Columbia apartment netted one of them, a woman who is accused of helping the robbers escape.

In planning strategy for the two trials, federal and local officials spent a great deal of time huddling to decide who should prosecute whom. Rockland County District Attorney Kenneth Gribetz says there was "an agreement from the start" that he and the federal prosecutors would divide up the defendants according to which jurisdiction had the best evidence. Gribetz ended up trying those he was convinced he could prove were at the scene of the robbery and murders. Using racketeering, conspiracy and bank-robbery statutes, federal authorities "are trying the people we could not easily get under state law," explains Gribetz. The federal-local cooperation has continued through the two trials, with boxes of handwriting specimens, fingerprints, hair samples and other physical evidence commuting between Manhattan and Goshen. In addition, several witnesses were called to testify at both trials.

There was some agreed-on noncooperation as well between the federal and local authorities. A critical role in the case was played by Samuel Brown, 43, a Brink's suspect who provided FBI agents with crucial early information, which he later claimed was coerced out of him. Questions were raised among prosecutors as to whether some of Brown's statements could be used against him in any trial. Brown does not face any federal charges, but Gribetz wants to try him in Goshen. In order to avoid tainting his case, the local prosecutor insists that he deliberately never examined any evidence in the federal case that originated with Brown, including tapes and transcripts from wiretaps that formed the foundation of the federal prosecution.

In the current Goshen trial, Gribetz has also been meticulous. He introduced 84 witnesses and 540 pieces of evidence in the process of building a case against Defendants Judith Clark, 33, David Gilbert, 39, and Kuwasi Balagoon, 36. In federal court, the four-month trial of the six defendants involved more than 100 witnesses. To be sure, the presentation of both cases was made easier by the refusal of some defendants to offer a standard defense. The three Goshen suspects early on pronounced the trial "illegitimate," because they consider themselves to be "freedom fighters" and "prisoners of war." They declined to be represented by lawyers and chose to sit out most of the trial in a specially built holding area in the basement of the courthouse, where testimony was piped to them over a public address system. Some of the federal trial suspects mounted a more traditional defense. Others, seemingly as well coordinated as the prosecutors, declared that the court had no right to try them. "I am clearly a political prisoner of war," intoned ex-Black Panther Sekou Odinga, 39, who added that he is engaged in an "armed struggle with the United States."

The only rancor that arose among officials involved in the two trials concerned who would pay. Uncle Sam picks up the federal bills, of course; no one would speculate on how much they will be, though one FBI agent notes that the cost of the investigations alone was certainly more than the $1.6 million commandeered in the Brink's heist. A battle is brewing, however, between Rockland County, where the crime occurred, and Orange County, where the trial was moved in a change of venue because of prejudicial pretrial publicity. Massive security has been necessary from the beginning, and Orange County has equipped and trained a special squad of police to guard the prisoners. Overall costs have reached $3 million and are still growing. But Rockland County has allocated only $1 million this year for the case and says it cannot afford any more. Orange County wants to be fully reimbursed, and there is talk of litigation.

Meanwhile, a second Goshen trial--of Samuel Brown and Kathy Boudin--is set to begin in October. Boudin, 40, the most notorious of the suspects because of her link to the 1970 explosion of a Greenwich Village Weather Underground bomb factory, will be represented by attorneys who have consulted with her father, Civil Liberties Lawyer Leonard Boudin. They, as well as Brown's lawyers, are expected to put up a vigorous, conventional defense. That trial could be even costlier than its predecessor. --By Michael S. Serrill.

Reported by Jonathan Beaty/New York

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/New York This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.