Former Navy Officer's Fraud Retrial Halted

An appeals court ordered a halt yesterday to the retrial of a former Navy commander accused of lying about injuries he suffered during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to collect more than $300,000 from a victims fund.

In April, a jury acquitted Charles E. Coughlin of three mail fraud charges but hung on charges of theft of public money, filing a false claim and two additional counts of mail fraud. Federal prosecutors began to retry Coughlin on the deadlocked charges last month.

Coughlin's defense team has argued that a Supreme Court ruling issued June 18 precludes prosecutors from proceeding with the retrial. The court held that an acquittal on some charges may protect defendants from retrial on related ones.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had denied a defense motion to stop the retrial. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed that decision and ordered a halt so it could consider the legal arguments. "These are critically important legal issues," said Coughlin's attorney, John A. Bourgeois.

-- Del Quentin Wilber