LOS ANGELES, Jul. 4 – The defunct 1973-74 Los Angeles County Grand Jury spent its final eight days in a controversial investigation, questioned by some as redundant, which resulted in the indictment of two lawyers on perjury charges.

The indictments came on circumstantial evidence, almost all of it previously known, which many legal minds believe will not hold up in court.

But key judges this week defended the inquiry mandated by the Board of Supervisors, as a proper use of the grand jury system.

Vincent T. Bugliosi and Daye Shinn, chief prosecutor and defense attorney respectively in the 1970 Charles Manson murder trial, were indicted for allegedly lying under oath three times — June 30, 1971, and Nov. 27, 1972, in the court of Superior Judge Charles H. Older and last week before the grand jury — about whether they gave Times reporter William Farr transcripts despite a court gag order, or knew who did.

Conviction could mean one to 15 years in state prison and disbarment.

The investigation put Farr, whom Older once jailed for 46 days for contempt, in contempt of the grand jury for five days until Superior Judge Raymond Choate reversed himself Tuesday and absolved Farr.

The inquiry cost taxpayers perhaps $10,000 — a $25 daily salary for each of the 23 grand jurors and fees for the special prosecutor, private attorney Theodore P. Shield.

Superior Court Executive Officer Frank Zolin said Shield has not yet presented a bill for his work but has been told he will be paid prevailing rates for Los Angeles lawyers — about $50 an hour for preparation and $350 a day presenting the case.

Although judges questioned the quality of evidence used to indict Bugliosi and Shinn and the motivation of the Board of Supervisors in calling for the investigation, they did not feel the inquiry duplicated what Older did in his court three years ago.

“It would be a waste of time to take eight days to go into old evidence just to satisfy the board,” one said. “But it did warrant something more than Judge Older’s investigation, because he was not concerned with the perjury question.”

They agreed that Older had conducted hearings only to determine who violated the court gag order in the Manson case and would be equipped as a judge to conduct any sophisticated investigation into the perjury question.

“The only way Older went about it was through Farr and that didn’t work out. That was all that was available to him.” one said. “A judge is not in a position to adequately investigate anything (such as perjury) He is not in a position to dredge up circumstantial evidence.”

One judge said he did consider the grand jury had wasted its time in the investigation because the district attorney and attorney general’s office, which looked into the matter, already had determined no inquiry was necessary.

“I have enough confidence in the district attorney and attorney general’s offices, which had investigated the matter, that I would think the grand jury investigation unnecessary,” he said.

“I suppose the supervisors have a right to request the grand jury to act on something if they feel the normal investigative agencies haven’t done their job, but I don’t agree that this was the case.”

The other judges agreed with Supervisor James A. Hayes — who first called for the special prosecutor — that Dist. Atty. Joseph Busch could not conduct an investigation because two of his deputies were involved and Farr had once worked for him, and that Atty. Gen. Evelle J. Younger was ruled out because he had been district attorney here during the Manson trial.

“I guess somebody had to start it other than the district attorney or attorney general,” one judge said, “and in that view I don’t think it was really improper meddling by the supervisors to request the investigation of the attorneys.”

“While it was not the normal use of the grand jury,” said another, “one function of the grand jury is to investigate unusual circumstances.”

One judge who praised the supervisors for acting when Busch’s and Younger’s office had not or could not, said:

“This thing was going to go down the drain. The statute (of limitations on perjury) was going to run out (June 30) and nobody had done anything. People had committed a serious crime (perjury) and nobody was really minding the public store. Older was catching hell and Bill Farr was going to jail, and nothing was getting done.”

Although most judges agreed the supervisors had the right if not the duty to call for the naming of the special prosecutor and the investigation, one criticized the move as an “asinine publicity stunt” by the supervisors.

“I don’t think it was any of the supervisors’ darn business,” he said. “What the devil have the supervisors got to do with worrying about perjury in the courtroom? They are outdoing each other getting involved in things.”

The supervisor who did consider it his business was Hayes, chairman of the county court system. It was his motion April 30 that urged appointment of a special prosecutor.

Hayes said in an interview this week he is certain the matter never would have reached the grand jury without the special prosecutor, because of the district attorney and attorney gener-al’s interest in the case.

He adamantly denied any political motivation for his action or that he had been persuaded by anyone to seek the investigation. He said he never has met nor talked to Bugliosi. Shinn or Older and met William Norris only for the first time the day indictments were handed down.

(Norris defeated Bugliosi June 4 for the Democratic attorney general nomination and has been critical of his Republican opponent, the incumbent Younger, for failing to make public his own investigation of the perjury case or to name a special investigator years ago).

Hayes said the timing of his action was in no way connected with the primary election date and never was intended as an anti-Bugliosi move, either politically or personally.

He said his decision to seek the special prosecutor was prompted by Norris’ release in mid April of a sworn deposition by Dep. Dist. Atty. Stephen. Kay, a Manson case attorney, made in a libel suit against Farr and others by two more Manson lawyers, Irving Kanarek and Paul Fitzgerald.

Kay, who also testified, at length before the grand jury, said he was asked by Farr to hand an envelope to Bugliosi shortly after Bugliosi received transcripts of a statement by trial witness Virginia Graham.

“For the first time my thoughts were aroused to the fact that the attorneys might have been involved,” Hayes said. “I didn’t know which attorneys and I still don’t.”

“As a lawyer myself, I thought the thing should be conclusively resolved” to protect the bar and court images, he said.

He said he also was concerned that the statute of limitations on the first alleged act of perjury was due to expire June 30 and wanted an investigation completed before that time.

(Special prosecutor, Shield said in a separate interview that no supervisors or others ever contacted him about presenting the case to the grand jury before the June 4 election. He said the hearing was scheduled as quickly as he could prepare and the grand jury could arrange it.

(“I did not purposely delay it,” he said, “but I was happy the grand jury did not have to make that decision before the primary. It would have been just like Reinecke [Lt. Gov. Ed Reinecke, indicted for perjury, lost the Republican gubernatorial nomination to Houston I. FlournoyI in Mr. Bugliosi’s case.

It could ruin his chances, and then if he is not guilty…’

Hayes said he discussed his action with “two or three people” and two of his deputies, but that “nobody tells me to do anything.”

He said he called Choate, who is grand jury judicial adviser, on April 30 as a matter of courtesy to inform him he planned to seek the special investigators.

He said Choate “told me on that day that he was actively considering that, too.” Choate refused to be interviewed by Times reporters.

One of the deputies with whom Hayes discussed his motion is married to a Long Beach reporter who has had a long-standing feud with Bugliosi since the Manson trial when he called her names after she wrote an article he disapproved of.

Hayes said he was totally unaware of any ill feeling between the reporter and Bugliosi, and all parties denied that such a dispute could have prompted Hayes’ call for the special prosecutor.

Some persons had considered that a grand jury investigation might be beneficial to the contempt-plagued Farr. By having the two sources named through independent evidence, they reasoned, Farr no longer would be subjected to questioning or contempt citations for refusing to answer on grounds a newsman may keep secret his sources. But Farr was subpoenaed by the grand jury, grilled six days, and briefly held in contempt.

Hayes said this week, however, he never even considered the effect on Farr that a grand jury investigation would bring. (He did term “great news” Choate’s decision Tuesday that Farr was not in contempt of the grand jury.)

“That (the Farr issue) really wasn’t a part of it,” he said this week. “I was mainly concerned with protecting the integrity of the court order which I felt was violated by somebody … My motivation was strictly to have the matter resolved.”

Hayes said he feels the grand jury has acted to resolve the perjury question.

“I am not happy because Bugliosi or Shinn was indicted,” he said. “I don’t have a knife out for anybody … but that is our system of justice.”

“If the special prosecutor, after examination of the facts, had found there was nothing there, I would have been happy with that result, too,” he said.

“I am not projecting myself beyond the point that there was in this case a need for somebody objective to look at it since the district attorney and attorney general could be said to have possible problems if they were to proceed with an investigation.”

Hayes was not critical of either Busch or Younger for action or inaction on their part, but explained he felt neither could conduct an in-depth investigation of perjury charges because of possible conflict of interest.

“I believe that both Atty. Gen. Evelle Younger and Dist. Atty. Joseph Busch are in a tenuous position in this case,” Hayes stated in his April 30 motion.

“Mr. Younger was the district attorney when the Manson trial began, and Mr. Farr later worked directly for Dist. Atty. Busch. Therefore, I move that our board request the grand jury to appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an immediate investigation of the case…”

Once the inquiry went behind the closed doors of the grand jury, any political or personal consideration involving Bugliosi or the others apparently disappeared completely.

The scheduled two-day inquiry stretched to eight as grand jurors, when Farr refused to name the alleged perjurers, glued together “pieces of the mosaic.” The circumstantial pieces that formed the pattern of the indictment included isolated answers by Kay, Shinn, and Dep. Atty. Gen. William Pounders, who conducted whatever investigation the state prosecutor’s office made but did not disclose publicly.

An off-hand remark by Shinn, either in testimony or depositions from others, to the effect he “gave Farr so many things I could have given him the transcripts” is believed to have led the grand jury toward this indictment.

Pounders’ testimony also was considered crucial to the final decision.

Shield at no time has said he asked the grand jury to indict any specific individuals. The group apparently reached its own conclusion after reviewing primarily the same evidence that has been handed through courtrooms since Older first sought to determine who violated the gag order, three years ago.

Heated deliberations, which prompted the comment “all hell broke loose in there,” may have been lengthened by an attempt by some grand jurors to cite Farr for more than contempt.

At least one was thought to believe Farr, not the six attorneys, had lied under oath about where he obtained the transcripts. Had that opinion prevailed, Farr himself might have been indicted for the felony charge of perjury. Charges of suborning (covering up) perjury or obstructing justice also could have been brought against the reporter, although it was believed Shield never sought any such action.

Despite antipress feeling by many government officials in as Watergate-weary country, apparently that did not affect the grand jury, at least initially.

Farr had covered grand jury proceedings during the group’s record 18-month term and had a friendly relationship with the members.

Sources close to the situation indicated all members liked and respected him when the investigation began but that some became upset when he refused to answer their questions.

Laymen untrained in law, the grand jurors reportedly could not understand his legal arguments for keeping silent — particularly on questions not directly seeking the names of his sources.

Person’s familiar with the prosecution of criminal cases, surveyed by The Times, doubted that the grand jury, after its lengthy and thorough inquiry, has wrought very much.

Bugliosi has pleaded not guilty and faces pretrial motions July 17. Shinn has said he will plead not guilty next Tuesday, and will move for a dismissal on grounds of lack of evidence.

“I think Shinn will be out of it within two motions,” said one of those surveyed in downgrading the evidence available to go to trial, “and I can’t see how they have enough to convict Bugliosi.”

To obtain conviction on circumstantial evidence alone, under law, the facts not only must be consistent with a reasonable hypothesis (the lawyers lied under oath), but the “pieces of the mosaic” also must be inconsistent with any other reasonable hypothesis.

By MYRNA OLIVER