Word: inquestion
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Last week, 17 hours before the inquest In Re: Mary Jo Kopechne was to begin on Martha's Vineyard, the state's highest court intervened, delaying the proceeding for at least several weeks and temporarily awarding Edward M. Kennedy a legal victory. Justice Paul Reardon ordered a postponement until the full seven-member supreme court, now in recess, could hear arguments on whether an inquest governed by Judge Boyle's ground rules would be a violation of Kennedy's constitutional rights...
Unchallenged Thesis. The postponement, of course, did nothing to halt his unofficial trial by popular opinion. Kennedy foresaw that his petition for delay would prompt talk about a "Kennedy power play" and "wealth and influence thwarting justice." But his lawyers increasingly feared that the inquest, under Judge Boyle's terms, could take on some aspects of a kangaroo court. Boyle opened the inquest to 103 reporters and denied that the hearing represented an accusatory proceeding. Hence, ruled Boyle, lawyers for the witnesses-including Kennedy and the others who attended the Chappaquiddick cookout-had no right to cross-examine...
General Inquisition. In the hearing before Justice Reardon in Boston's Suffolk County Courthouse, Kennedy Attorney Edward Benno Hanify argued: "It is difficult to see in the inquest something other than a general inquisition into his reputation and conduct over and above that to which he has already pleaded guilty [leaving the scene of an accident]. I submit that the rights of which he has been deprived present grave constitutional questions...
...bench was Paul Reardon. Three years ago, Reardon drew up the American Bar Association's stringent Fair Trial-Free Press code, which, among other things, recommended excluding reporters from all pretrial proceedings or hearings that do not take place before a jury. "Hearsay can be introduced at any inquest," Reardon said last week, "even hearsay on top of hearsay." After granting a postponement, Reardon pointedly implied that District Attorney Edmund Dinis and other authorities involved in the case had been speaking too freely. Such statements, he warned as Dinis sat grimly in the courtroom, "carry the seeds of prejudice...
Whatever negligence may have been involved, an inquest does not seem to be the most efficient way to gather the evidence of it. The public has a legitimate interest in knowing whether or not Kennedy misrepresented the facts of the accident, but a U.S. Senator, like any other citizen, has a right to be protected from prejudicial publicity that may affect some future legal matter. Unless Judge Boyle keeps the testimony within bounds, the inquest could turn into a circus that would be unfair to Kennedy and the other witnesses as well...