Prosecuted Watergate figures, Hoffa
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -
James F. Neal, who successfully prosecuted Jimmy Hoffa and key Watergate figures, has died. He was 81.
His law partner, Aubrey Harwell, said Friday that Neal died Thursday night at a Nashville hospital.
“He had had been suffering the last several months from cancer,” Harwell said.
In 1964, Neal successfully prosecuted Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa on jury-tampering charges in Chattanooga.
Neal was the special Watergate prosecutor who won convictions in 1974 of one-time Richard Nixon aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Attorney General John Mitchell.
He was working as a specialassistant to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy when he secured the government’s first conviction against Hoffa - sending him to prison. Four previous government efforts to convict Hoffa had failed.
In private practice, Neal successfully defended Ford Motor Co. against reckless-homicide charges in Indiana after the gas tank of a 1973 Ford Pinto exploded, killing the car’s driver.
A year later in 1981, he also successfully defended Dr. George Nichopoulos of Memphis against charges that he overprescribed drugs to Elvis Presley.
He was hired in 1990 to represent the Exxon Corp., which was charged with polluting the Alaska shoreline with the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 10 on 10/23/2010