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| Kerry Kennedy, second from left, walks with her mother, Ethel Kennedy, third from left, as she leaves the Westchester County Courthouse, Friday, Feb. 28, 2014 in White Plains, N.Y. Kerry Kennedy was acquitted Friday of driving while impaired. after she accidentally took a sleeping pill on July 13, 2012 and then sideswiped a truck in a wild highway drive she said she didn't remember. The trial centered on whether or not she realized she was impaired and should have stopped. |
WHITE PLAINS,
N.Y. (AP) -- Kerry Kennedy was swiftly acquitted Friday of drugged
driving in a case that her lawyers said would never have been brought if
she were simply "Mary Housewife" rather than a member of one of
America's most glamorous political families.
After
four days of testimony, a six-person jury took a little over an hour to
find Kennedy not guilty of driving while impaired. She was arrested in
2012 after swerving into a tractor-trailer on an interstate highway in
her Lexus.
The 54-year-old human-rights
advocate - the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, niece of President John F.
Kennedy and ex-wife of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo - testified she
mistakenly took a sleeping pill instead of her daily thyroid medication
the morning of the wreck.
If convicted, she could have been sentenced to a year in jail, though that would have been unlikely for a first-time offender.
Her
lawyers made sure that the jurors knew all about her famous family. But
after the acquittal, they said she should have been treated like "Mary
Housewife." And they accused prosecutors of giving her special treatment
by refusing to drop the case.
The district attorney's office denied the accusation. And Kennedy herself said she wasn't angry about being put on trial.
In
a show of the Kennedy clan's famous loyalty, the defendant's
85-year-old mother, Ethel Kennedy, attended the trial daily. Nearly a
dozen other members of the family came by, including three brothers, two
sisters, a sister-in-law and three daughters.
Laurence
Leamer, who has written three books about the Kennedys, said: "The
Kennedys are very loyal to each other in a crisis. ... It's one of the
most admirable things about them." He said there's no way to gauge the
effect on the jury, but "Kennedys or not, it's Defense 101 to have
family members sitting there for the jury to see."
Tobe
Berkovitz, a political media consultant and professor of advertising at
Boston University, said: "The Kennedys saw this as a DA overreaching,
making a big case out of a silly mistake. So they absolutely played
every Camelot trump card they had in the deck. They had the family. They
had questions about her losing her father as a young girl."
He added, "When the legacy is being challenged, they all step up and fight."
The trial drew so much attention that it was moved from a small-town courtroom to the county courthouse in White Plains.
Kennedy
testified that she had no memory of the wild ride on the highway. "If I
realized I was impaired, I would have pulled over," she told the jury.
Prosecutors
acknowledged she unintentionally took the drug zolpidem, but they told
jurors she had to have known she was impaired and should have stopped
driving.
When the jury forewoman read the
verdict, Kennedy smiled broadly, hugged one attorney and clasped hands
with another. Her family and friends applauded.
The
charge was a misdemeanor that rarely goes to trial, but Kennedy was
unwilling to settle the case and two judges refused to dismiss it.
Her
family's storied and sorrowful history crept into the trial when one of
her lawyers asked about her upbringing and her work as president of the
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
"My mother raised us because my father died when I was 8," she said. "He was killed when he was running for president."
Kennedy's
lawyer Gerald Lefcourt told jurors in his closing argument that Kennedy
was "not seeking advantage because of her family."
Another
one of her lawyers, William Aronwald, said Friday that prosecutors told
her they could not dismiss the case because "it would create the
impression that Kerry Kennedy received special treatment because of her
name." He said prosecutors "were the ones who treated her differently
because of who she is."
The Westchester County
district attorney's office disputed the suggestion. "We prosecute 2,500
impaired driving cases annually in Westchester County," the office said
in a statement. "This case was treated no differently from any of the
others."
When Kennedy was asked after the
verdict if she was angry that the case was pursued, she said: "Anger is
the last feeling I've got right now."
At a news conference outside, she noted that few people have the resources to fight such a charge.
"We
need to take a hard look at our criminal justice system in the United
States and make sure it really is just and everyone in our country has
true access to justice," Kennedy said.
