by Val Ellicott
Staff Writer
A guest at the Kennedy estate on Easter weekend
testified Sunday that he heard no noises from the lawn below his
bedroom window at the time a woman says she screamed and struggled as
William Kennedy Smith raped her.
Stephen Barry capped a day of mostly dry expert
testimony by recalling that he heard nothing to indicate a rape might
have been taking place, even though his bedroom window was open.
"Was there anything that disturbed your
sleep?" defense attorney Mark Schnapp asked Barry.
"No, there wasn't," Barry said. "Nothing."
Defense attorneys will almost certainly make much
of the fact that none of the 13 people who were inside the Kennedy
house at the same time heard the woman scream.
Barry said his brother had awakened him the night
before by calling softly to him from the lawn below. And he said
that, from his second floor bedroom at the Kennedy house, he could
hear people conversing at moderate volume on the far side of the lawn.
Barry began his testimony by recalling, in a voice
breaking with emotion, Sen. Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968.
Barry's father, William Barry, was the man who grabbed the gun from
assassin Sirhan Sirhan.
State prosecutor Moira Lasch, sensitive to the
potential impact of such emotional testimony on jurors, quickly objected.
"This is totally irrelevant," she told
Judge Mary Lupo, who sustained the objection.
Barry will continue testifying when Smith's defense
team resumes its case today. Smith is charged with sexual battery--
the equivalent of rape in Florida-- and simple battery in the alleged
attack on the Jupiter woman about 4 a.m. March 30. Lupo said closing
arguments could come Friday.
On Sunday morning, before the court session began,
Smith attended church, where he was confronted by reporters who
shouted: "Do you want to testify?"
"Yes," he responded.
Attorneys spent most of Sunday questioning expert
witnesses called by the defense to bolster its claim that Smith and
his accuser had consensual sex on the beach in front of the Kennedy estate.
At one point, defense attorney Mark Seiden accused
Lasch of attacking the credibility of a witness with misleading,
"bad faith" questions.
He asked for a mistrial, but Lupo denied his request.
The experts called Sunday focused on two areas--
the grass and sand found inside the panties worn by Smith's accuser
and the condition of the clothes she was wearing during the alleged attack.
"No cuts, no tears, no abrasions, no grass
stains, no soil stains, " Henry Lee, chief medical examiner for
the state of Connecticut, said of the woman's black dress.
Lee showed jurors two white handkerchiefs, one of
which he had rubbed on the lawn next to the Kennedy house and one of
which he had rubbed over a concrete area where the Jupiter woman says
Smith first tripped her. The first handkerchief showed grass stains,
and the second showed abrasions.
Lee said if the woman's dress had rubbed against
the lawn during the alleged rape with at least as much force as he
used to rub the handkerchief, it should show grass or soil stains.
Prosecutor Ellen Roberts countered by noting that
Smith's defense team, which is spending thousands of dollars on
expert witnesses, didn't spend the $125 it would have cost to provide
Lee with an identical dress from Ann Taylor.
And Lee acknowledged that a number of variables--
for instance, whether the grass was wet the morning of the alleged
rape-- could have affected whether the dress was stained.
Jay Siegel, a professor of forensic sciences at
Michigan State University, testified later that the sand found inside
the woman's panties was beach sand that didn't match soil samples he
took from the lawn.
But in response to rapid-fire questioning by Lasch,
he acknowledged that the sand could have stuck to Smith's body if
Smith first went skinny-dipping in the ocean, as the woman claims,
then ran across the beach to attack her on the lawn.
The sand then could have found its way inside the
panties during the alleged rape, Siegel said.
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*Kennedy Smith case
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