The Nation : Judge Rebuffs Iran-Contra Defendants

U.S. District Judge Gerhard Gesell rebuffed attorneys for Lt. Col. Oliver L. North and two other Iran-Contra defendants who charged the judge has made “hollow the judicial promise” that immunized testimony would not be used against them. Gesell denied a motion by defense attorneys to delay Monday’s pre-trial hearing, set to determine whether independent prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh and his investigators “were properly isolated from exposure” to immunized testimony given by the defendants during last summer’s congressional hearings into the Iran-Contra affair. Richard W. Beckler, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. and N. Richard Janis, attorneys for John M. Poindexter, North and Albert A. Hakim respectively, said in their motion that Gesell’s April 13 order “is particularly troubling and unfair because it in effect adopts a legal position concerning the scope of (the pre-trial hearing) without the court ever having provided the defense an opportunity to be heard.”