Palm Beach Trial

By Cathy Booth/West Palm Beach

After 10 days of wrenching, confusing and graphic testimony, it took the six-member jury only 77 minutes to find William Kennedy Smith not guilty of raping a woman at his family's Palm Beach estate last Easter weekend. The swift decision raised questions about the prosecution's case, which boiled down to pitting the accuser's harrowing tale of being pinned to the ground and violated against Smith's equally vehement denials. Many prosecutors would have dropped the case as unwinnable. Why then did State Attorney David Bludworth and Moira Lasch, his chief felony attorney, decide to press ahead?

Smith's lawyer, Roy Black, and some legal experts assert that Bludworth's motive was to avoid seeming soft on the Kennedy family. But there was more to it than that. During their eight-month investigation, the prosecutors became convinced that the woman was telling the truth about Smith, then a medical student at Georgetown University. Their problem was proving that in court.

After the trial ended, Bludworth insisted, "Based on the evidence, I would charge ((Smith)) again today. This wasn't date rape. They had just met. This was a sexual battery, intercourse without her consent." The police, prosecutors, rape counselors and the doctors who examined the woman believed her. During the investigation, she passed two polygraph tests and a voice- stress analysis. She stuck to her story through five grueling interrogations by police and prosecutors and an exhausting three-day deposition by the defense. The bruises on her torso were consistent with the attack she described. Says Bludworth: "There was absolutely no question that there was more than probable cause to file charges."

Much as Bludworth may deny it, the fact that a Kennedy family member was involved may have played a role in his decision to prosecute. Seven years ago, he was accused of kowtowing to the family by not thoroughly investigating the drug-overdose death of Robert Kennedy's son David in Palm Beach. Bludworth, who faces re-election next year, risked renewed accusations of a cover-up had he declined to move against another Kennedy.

His and Lasch's suspicions were further aroused when the Kennedys gave police investigators what seemed to be a runaround. William Barry, a former FBI agent who was staying at the compound, incorrectly told detectives that Senator Edward Kennedy had left for Washington when in fact he was having lunch at the Palm Beach estate. For two weeks the family rebuffed police attempts to survey the grounds where the alleged assault took place. That was sufficient time for the wind and sea to obliterate any evidence that might have corroborated the woman's story. A grand jury may decide this week whether to indict Barry for obstruction of justice.

Any doubts Bludworth and Lasch might have harbored about Smith's guilt seem to have been swept away last summer when three women came forward to claim that they too had been sexually attacked by Smith. Each described how an initially charming Smith had turned violent once they were alone with him -- eerily mirroring the account of the woman in the Palm Beach case.

Presenting the women's stories to a jury was another matter. Florida bars testimony about a rape defendant's sexual history unless it shows a striking and detailed similarity to the crime he is charged with. Moreover, none of the women had filed charges against Smith. One of Lasch's most controversial moves was to release the three women's stories, perhaps mistakenly hoping that prospective jurors would remember them even if they were not introduced into evidence. Bludworth says Florida's "sunshine law," which requires that public records be made available on request, left Lasch with no choice but to make the stories public -- as well as details of the accuser's sexual past, which included three abortions and sexual abuse by her father.

Defense attorney Black mounted a devastating counterattack on the women's stories. He argued that the three cases did not represent a "signature style," and that the only real question in the Palm Beach case was whether the woman consented or not. When Judge Mary Lupo ruled that the women could not testify because Lasch had failed to establish enough parallels between their stories and the one from Smith's accuser, the prosecution's case, for all practical purposes, was over.

Its cause was not helped by Lasch's plodding courtroom performance. She was clearly despondent after Smith's boy-next-door performance on the witness stand. He calmly described accepting the woman's offer of a ride home from Au Bar, a popular Palm Beach night spot, and then walking with her along the beach. After exchanging kisses, he testified, the couple had two sexual encounters -- though the romantic mood was broken when he mistakenly called her "Cathie." Unable to shake Smith's story, Lasch resorted to expressions of incredulity that two people who had met in a notorious pickup joint could be having sex only a few hours later. "Well, Mr. Smith, what are you? Some kind of sex machine?" she asked. Some law students are buying tapes of her four-hour cross-examination of Smith to learn from her mistakes.

After his exoneration, Smith celebrated with his family, then spent the weekend catching up on his tan at the estate. Meanwhile, his accuser remained in hiding in a vain attempt to maintain her anonymity. Only hours after the jury read its verdict, TV technicians on some channels dramatically dissolved the blurry blob that had hidden her face from viewers while the trial proceeded. From now on she will be recognizable as the woman who accused William Kennedy Smith of rape -- and was not believed.