The Twelfth Man Hangs a Jury

A holdout in Daniel Flood's bribery case causes a mistrial

The evidence kept mounting against Pennsylvania's Democratic Congressman Daniel Flood in his three-week trial for taking more than $60,000 in bribes. A lobbyist, three businessmen and a rabbi told of paying off Flood to arrange federal grants and contracts. Stephen Elko, Flood's onetime top aide who is now serving a two-year sentence for taking bribes from some of the same people, quoted his old boss as saying, "This is a business. Get all you can while you can get it." Meanwhile, the 16-term Congressman, known for his rococo oratory and baroque waxed mustache, declined to take the stand in Washington, D.C.'s federal district court or, in fact, to say anything.

Eleven jurors heard enough to convict. But not the twelfth. According to other jurors, retired Navy Cook William Cash, 63, held out for Flood's acquittal during the almost twelve hours of deliberation. The result: a mistrial--and a federal investigation into the reasons for it. Last week, TIME has learned, federal agents received information linking Cash with individuals described as "associates of Flood." Cash denies everything, but a strange tale has begun to unfold.

Soon after the jury retired to consider the verdict, Cash made it clear that he would vote "not guilty" on every one of eleven counts of bribery, conspiracy and perjury against Flood. At first, he would not say why. But then he told the jury that he had learned from "confidential sources" that three of the prosecution's witnesses, including Elko, had "stolen" $176,000 from Flood. "Cash felt that the other three were guiltier than Flood and that Flood had been taken advantage of," says Juror Elizabeth Vegos, 29. Cash also stated that he did not want to convict Flood because of the Congressman's age, 74. The evidence against Flood was still overwhelming, other jurors argued. But, says Vegos, "it was just impossible to talk with the man." Repeatedly, the vote came out the same: 11 to 1 to convict Flood on at least four counts of bribery and three counts of perjury. Finally, Cash and the jury foreman, according to Vegos, disappeared into a bathroom to try to work out a deal: Would Cash go along with a guilty verdict on one count if the other jurors agreed to acquit on all the rest? The jurors rejected that idea.

One wrote an unsigned note to Judge Oliver Gasch protesting: "I don't think American justice should work this way." When Gasch called the jurors together, he quickly learned of Cash's so-called confidential information. Questioned by the judge, Cash simply shrugged and said it had been a "joke." Back went the jury, with instructions to consider only evidence presented in court. Again it deadlocked, and the judge, "with the utmost reluctance," declared a mistrial.

Last week Cash maintained he had made up a joke that he scarcely recalls, and that he had never even heard of Flood before the trial. But federal officials were not so sure. Cash's information is similar in some details to a story Flood told Elko years ago. How Cash could have got involved is a mystery. Along with the rest of the jury, he was supposed to be completely isolated from outside contact during the trial. Federal marshals accompanied jurors on trips to pick up clean clothes from home, and even the windows of the jurors' van were covered with green paper.

As for Flood, the question of a new trial was still undecided. In any event, he seems finished as a power in Congress. Hospitalized for exhaustion last week, he has already resigned as chairman of the Labor-HEW Appropriations Subcommittee, the base from which he funneled millions of dollars into his Wilkes-Barre congressional district. Still, he was overwhelmingly returned to Congress last November, thanks to constituents who voted for him as stubbornly as Juror William Cash.

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