Jury Determines Offner Is Guilty Appeal Fails in Case Of Assaulting Watson

A Middlesex County jury convicted a former Harvard graduate student yesterday of assaulting Dean Watson during last April's occupation of University Hall.

Carl D. Offner, one of three students dismissed from the University by the Faculty last June, was found guilty on a single charge of assault and battery, carrying a maximum penalty of two-and-a-half years in the state House of Correction and/or a fine of $500.

Superior Court Justice Robert Sullivan, who presided over the two-day trial, said he would pass sentence on Offner this morning at 10 a. m., and ordered him held in custody overnight in the Middlesex County House of Correction in Billerica.

The jury of eleven men and one woman deliberated a little more than an hour yesterday afternoon before returning its verdict.

Appealing

Offner was appealing a lower-court decision on the assault and battery charge. Last May 18, Cambridge District Court Judge Edward M. Viola, sitting without a jury, found him guilty after hearing Dean Watson testify that the teaching fellow in Mathematics was one of those who held him by the arms and pushed him out of University Hall the afternoon of April 9.

Viola sentenced Offer to a year in jail, and Offer appealed to Superior Court.

In reaching its decision yesterday, the jury rejected testimony from half a dozen defense witnesses who said they were in University Hall and saw Harvard's Dean of Students being led out of the building, but did not see Offer holding him.

Watson-the only witness for the Commonwealth-testified that as he was being led through the inside glass doors of

University Hall he looked over his right shoulder and saw that Offer "had hold of my right biceps with two hands." When he got outside the building, Watson said, he "was propelled up against the people who were standing on the stairs."

Battery Power

Under cross-examination by Offer's lawyer Daniel Klubock, Watson said he was not injured in the scuffle. But Justice Sullivan told members of the jury that any use of "intentional, unjustified force of whatever degree" could be considered "battery" under the common law.

Klubock entered several exceptions to Justice Sullivan's conduct of the ease, but would not say last night if he was planning to appeal the case to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. An "exception" is a formal objection to a judge's action during a trial, which may serve as a basis for a further appeal.