Justice at Kent State

The killings at Kent State are a national stain that has stubbornly refused to go away. Though the shootings occurred nearly four years ago, the insistent demands for justice by parents of the victims and others have kept the matter before the attention of official scrutiny by one Government agency or another. Last week it looked as if at long last the Kent State tragedy was heading toward a just resolution.

A federal grand jury in Cleveland indicted seven former and one present Ohio National Guardsmen, all enlisted men. They were members of the units that fired into the crowd of about 500 students, including some rock throwers, who demonstrated on the Ohio university campus against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia on that bloody afternoon of May 4,1970. When the 13-second volley was over, four students lay dead and nine others wounded.

A state grand jury absolved the Guardsmen in 1970. Even though investigations by the FBI and a presidential commission criticized the Guardsmen's conduct, the case was closed officially in August 1971, when then Attorney General John N. Mitchell said, "There is no likelihood of successful prosecutions of individual Guardsmen." Yet parents, surviving students and their sympathizers refused to give up. They petitioned the Federal Government to reopen the inquiry. Finally, on orders from former Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson, a federal grand jury began hearings in Cleveland last Dec. 18. Over a 39-day period, the 22 jurors heard 173 witnesses.

The grand jury accused the Guardsmen of violating the civil rights of the demonstrators by assaulting and intimidating them. Five defendants--Lawrence A. Shafer, 28, and James D. McGee, 27, both of Ravenna, Ohio; William E. Perkins, 28, of Canton, Ohio; James E. Pierce, 29, of Amelia Island, Fla.; and Ralph W. Zoller, 27, of Mantua, Ohio --were charged with felonies for the four deaths. If convicted, all could be sentenced from one year to life in prison. The other three defendants--Barry W. Morris, 29, of Kent; Mathew J. McManus, 28, of West Salem, Ohio; and Leon H. Smith, 27, of Bay City, Ohio--were charged with misdemeanors because there was no evidence that their bullets had struck the dead students. If found guilty, they each could get up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The grand jury's indictment left major questions unanswered, although the answers may come out during the trial of the Guardsmen. There was no mention of a conspiracy among the Guardsmen to shoot the students, which was one theory raised in previous investigations. Nor did the grand jury say anything about the commanding officers of the Guard and political leaders, including James A. Rhodes, Republican Governor at the time. He had been criticized by students for inciting violence by declaring the day before the shooting that the students were "worse than Brownshirts and the Communists and vigilantes--they're the worst type of people we harbor in America."

To the parents of the slain students --Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Miller, 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, and William Schroeder, 19--the indictments were a vindication of sorts. "We are not interested in the Guardsmen being imprisoned or fined but that the truth come out as to what they did," said Mrs. Louis Schroeder of Lorain, Ohio. Added Mrs. Sarah Scheuer of Youngstown, Ohio: "I'm pleased that at long last there will be an accounting before the law." Kent State Student Dean Kahler, 24, who was struck in the spine by a Guardsman's bullet and is now confined to a wheelchair, declared: "This re-establishes my faith in the grand jury system. The American system of justice finally prevailed."

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