Chadwick freed after 14-year contempt sentence

H. Beatty Chadwick, imprisoned in Delaware County for the last 14 years, was in the jail library yesterday, giving legal advice to female inmates, when a prison official walked up and gave him the news.

He was a free man.

Minutes earlier, a Delaware County Court judge had issued an order granting Chadwick's petition for freedom and ending his 14-year incarceration for contempt of court - a U.S. record for that charge.

" 'We want you out of here right away,' " Chadwick, 73, said the official told him.

In 1995 - when Apollo 13 was a box-office hit, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, and 168 people were killed in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City - Chadwick, a corporate lawyer who grew up in Bryn Mawr, was embroiled in a nasty divorce. In April of that year, he was arrested by two sheriff's deputies at his dentist's Center City office and taken to jail.

A Delaware County judge had issued the order to jail Chadwick for failing to deposit $2.5 million in a court-controlled account to be used to pay alimony to his ex-wife, Barbara "Bobbie" Applegate.

Chadwick contended that he no longer had the money, saying he lost it in a bad overseas investment. The judge believed Chadwick had hidden the money after divorce proceedings began. Court-ordered investigations conducted since he went to jail have turned up no money.

The Chadwicks were married for 15 years. Beatty Chadwick called the marriage happy. His ex-wife said he was stubborn and controlled her every move.

Efforts yesterday to reach Applegate's attorney, Albert Momjian, were unsuccessful.

In yesterday's ruling, Judge Joseph P. Cronin said Chadwick had the ability to comply with the 1995 order to make the bank deposit, but willfully refused to do so. But after 14 years, Cronin said, the contempt order had lost its coercive effect and become punitive.

At the jail yesterday, when Chadwick's attorney, Michael J. Malloy, arrived to pick him up, about 50 people - prison staff as well as inmates - gathered inside and out to see him off.

"It was a pretty remarkable scene," Malloy said. People were crying and hugging Chadwick and shaking his hand, he said. When the former inmate walked out under a brilliant blue sky, everyone applauded, Malloy said.

Malloy and Chadwick packed 14 years worth of clothes, books, magazines, and boxes of legal filings into the backseat and trunk of Malloy's Honda Accord and drove off.

"I really missed being free and being able to have interactions with other people," said Chadwick, wearing a dapper green suit and maroon tie. "Jail is really a very artificial society."

Later, in Malloy's office in Media, Chadwick talked about his legal battles, the judicial system, his life in prison, and his future.

He said he bore no anger over his imprisonment or toward his ex-wife, to whom he said he had not spoken in more than a decade.

"The dark moments always came when I had a turndown from some court," said Chadwick, who repeatedly sought his release over the years. He said he kept his spirits up by helping others with their legal issues.

For more than six years, Malloy worked on the case on a pro bono basis.

"I always thought, if I could take this to a jury, he would have been home in a week," Malloy said.

When Chadwick's son William, 41, walked into the office, the two embraced.

"It was so tough to keep up hopes at these hearings. . . .," the younger Chadwick said. "We were concentrating so much on getting him out, we haven't thought what we'd do immediately afterward."

Chadwick will stay at his son's house in King of Prussia until he can set up his own apartment. He has no firm plans beyond that.

"I have to get out and make a living," said Chadwick, who said he had no income other than Social Security.

He said he would consider teaching, perhaps in a corporate advisory role, and would try to get his law license reinstated.

"I'm really thinking about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life," he said, adding that he would like to be of benefit to others.

As Chadwick walked outside to transfer his belongings to his son's Prius, a man driving along Veterans Square honked his horn, cheered, and gave the thumbs-up sign.

"Good job, buddy," said the man, a former fellow inmate of Chadwick's who declined to give his name. "You deserve to be out."