Acquitted general to press for reform of justice system

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BIDDEFORD — Like an old soldier preparing his final campaign, retired Army Gen. Wallace H. Nutting is a man with a mission.

Acquitted after a six-month defense fraud trial in Tampa, Fla., Nutting plans to go on the offensive with his charge that a federal prosecutor’s flagrant abuse of power turned 2 1/2 years of his life into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Nutting wants to write a book and go on the lecture circuit to detail what he sees as a terrifying threat to individual liberty that could turn any American into a target of a “lone gun” prosecutor bent on obtaining an indictment without regard to just cause.

“I can see my mission in life at this late stage being to shed some light on the justice system and to try to identify some reforms that might be in order,” he said.

Nutting, 65, and his wife, Jane, returned last week to their seaside home in Biddeford Pool for the first time in nearly eight months. They say they have been vindicated by the verdict but remain outraged at what the ordeal has cost them in time and material resources.

Nutting’s trial stemmed from his involvement with Sooner Defense of Florida Inc., a now-defunct contractor whose munitions included sophisticated fuze assemblies for the 25mm shells used in the Army’s Bradley fighting vehicle.

The government accused Nutting and eight co-defendants of engaging in a conspiracy to sell defective munitions and cheat on safety tests in an attempt to bilk the military out of $40 million.

After 3 1/2 days of deliberations last month, a U.S. District Court jury convicted five Sooner executives and one defense monitor, acquitting Nutting and two other defendants.

Nutting maintains that there was never any evidence linking him to any wrongdoing. He suggests that the lead prosecutor, himself a retired Army officer, either nursed a grudge against the military or sought to make a name for himself by indicting a four-star general.

The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ernest Peluso, says Nutting’s charges are absurd and denies that there was any misconduct on the part of the government. He attributes Nutting’s allegations to the emotional stress of a long and arduous trial.

“This was a righteous prosecution. The grand jury felt that way when it handed up the indictment, and the petit jury felt that way when it convicted on the vast majority of the counts,” Peluso said.

Nutting and his lawyer, Sandy Weinberg, disagree. Weinberg, who spent six years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City, said he had never seen a more egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct — or a more unlikely target.

Weinberg described his client as a straight-arrow officer whose integrity was beyond question.

“There’s not a dishonest bone in this man’s body,” the lawyer said.

Nutting says he never sought to get into the defense contracting business after his retirement in 1985, but agreed to help at Sooner Defense at the behest of his West Point roommate.

The general said his work was essentially that of a consultant, although he agreed to serve as president during the 14 days before the company ran out of cash and went out of business.

No aspect of the case angers him more than the government’s claim that he knowingly sent shoddy ammunition to troops in the field.

“My God, I spent my life leading soldiers, and worrying about them and trying to make sure they were as safe as they can be. And that is absolutely the last thing in the world I would do,” he said.

Far from being defective, the fuzes manufactured at Sooner Defense’s Lakeland plant were judged by Army technical experts as the best ever produced anywhere, he said.

Nutting said he used to feel that if someone had been named in a criminal indictment, “there must be something there.” And while the case altered his view of the grand jury process, it left emotional scars.

“I certainly felt tainted; you feel somewhat like a leper,” said Nutting, whose career had been capped by the top posts at the U.S. Southern Command and the U.S. Readiness Command.

Weinberg quoted Nutting as saying the experience was much more difficult than going into combat because he felt the legal wrangling was beyond his control.

But if there was an upside, Nutting said, it was the outpouring of support he received from friends, neighbors and hundreds of former colleagues from his years in the military.

The costs of defending himself wiped him out financially, he said, but a fund-raising effort by supporters kept him from being forced to sell his house.

During the trial, friends provided him the use of a condominium outside Tampa and attended court each day to show their support.

Nutting said he was appalled by the lack of oversight in both the U.S. Attorney’s Office and at the Justice Department, which should have reviewed the case as a safeguard against prosecutorial abuse.

“You hear a lot of snide comments about military justice, but it’s a hell of a lot more objective and fair than what I’ve found in this most recent experience,” he said.

Now, returning to Maine for the first time since early December, he is catching up on house repairs and yard work as he considers the future and prepares to go on with his life.

“Most people don’t say to try to put this behind us. Most people say, `You’ve got a story to tell. Try to tell it.’ And I think we should,” he said.