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by Val Ellicott
Staff Writer
Those curt courtroom exchanges between prosecutor
Moira Lasch and members of William Kennedy Smith's defense team were
almost cordial next to the vitriol that marked correspondence between
the two sides.
A case in point: the Great Phone Call Spat.
On July 25, Lasch visited defense attorney Mark
Seiden at his Miami office to review photographs the defense planned
to use at Smith's trial. On the way out, she asked whether she could
use a phone to call her office.
Seiden turned her down, Lasch said in a letter to
lead defense attorney Roy Black the next day. Instead, she said,
Seiden offered to have his secretary place the call using Lasch's
credit card.
"Because Mr. Seiden was so obviously loath to
have me use the phone, I went to the office next door, where I used
the phone," Lasch fumed.
A few days later, Seiden fired off a response to
Lasch. He took exception to "several untruths" that he said
appeared in her letter.
"The next time you sit down with your
dictating machine to compose an insulting letter," he huffed,
"at least please make it an accurate one."
Those letters and dozens of others are contained in
18 boxes of records that Lasch has compiled on the Smith case. Most
of the material was not released until Smith was acquitted Dec. 11.
EARLY CASUALTY
Much of the bickering between prosecutors and
Smith's attorneys involved the release of records damaging to Smith.
They also squabbled over the scheduling of depositions, presentation
of evidence and general exchange of information.
Oral communication was an early casualty of the
deepening animosity.
"In the phone conversations I have had with
you, you have contradicted yourself on numerous occasions,"
Lasch wrote defense attorney Mark Schnapp on May 21. "Please
make any future requests for information from our office in writing."
In other letters, Lasch bristles at the merest hint
that Kennedy family members were expecting special treatment from her
office or were using their power to thwart her prosecution of Smith.
When Gregory Craig, Sen. Ted Kennedy's attorney,
suggested in a fax that there was no legal basis for making the
senator's phone records public, Lasch shot back: "It would be
both unethical and a violation of Florida law to treat the records of
Senator Kennedy differently than any other records. Your suggestion
that I withhold these records impugns my personal integrity and also
that of the State Attorney' s Office."
She told Craig she was returning his fax.
"The information is worthless to me," she said.
Three days later, Lasch was snapping at Craig
again. Her gripe this time was an article in The Palm Beach Post that
quoted Kennedy's press secretary, Paul Donovan, dismissing the
credibility of a man who said he had overheard Kennedy discussing the
alleged rape at a Palm Beach restaurant a day before the senator says
he knew about it.
Donovan's comment "clearly violates the spirit
of the gag order in this case," Lasch wrote, adding, "It is
apparent that Senator Kennedy has a national media network and that
system is being used to disseminate information concerning this case."
School, medical records
The thousands of pages of documents stored in the
State Attorney's Office also contain school and medical records on
Patti Bowman, the Jupiter woman who accused Smith of tackling and
raping her, as well as depositions and other records.
Highlights include:
* A three-page letter to Bowman from Robert
Calvert, a part-time television cameraman. Calvert has harassed
Bowman repeatedly since May, according to police records. He wrote
the letter May 23, the same day Bowman cut him off in traffic and
demanded to know why he was following her.
In the letter, Calvert, who briefly worked for the
television tabloid show Hard Copy, praised Bowman for her bravery,
discussed his own interest in electronics and advised Bowman to
needle Smith by leaking false information that he had made her pregnant.
He also asked Bowman to forgive him for bothering
her and promised he wouldn't harass her again.
"I suddenly felt that I was raping you,"
Calvert wrote of his reaction when Bowman confronted him. "Thank
you for putting me in touch with my soul. Thank you for making me
feel cheap and sleazy. I guess I needed the shock therapy."
On Jan. 6, Bowman filed another complaint with
police, saying Calvert still was harassing her.
* School records from Rollins College in Winter
Park that show Bowman failed at least one course because of what she
described as painful back problems.
Bowman was involved in a serious car accident in
1976 that broke several vertebrae in her back and neck. Chronic pain
caused her to miss so many classes in Philosophy and Human Potentials
that school officials barred her from attending classes the following
winter and spring.
Records show that teachers noted her back problems
and supported her request for a medical withdrawal.
In a Jan. 27, 1989, letter, Bowman asked school
officials to reconsider their earlier ruling and allow her to re-enroll.
"Hopefully with a little special consideration
from (teachers), my back's health and more scholarly responsibility
on my part, these problems will not occur again," she wrote.
* Several anonymous, hand-written letters
suggesting where prosecutors could look for damaging information
about Smith's sexual past.
* A deposition from a bartender at F.J. O'Donnell's
Saloon in West Palm Beach who said that Anne Mercer, a prosecution
witness, has been thrown out of the bar a number of times for
becoming drunk and belligerent.
"It's a quiet bar, and she likes to yell and
stuff like that," Christopher Zaskey told Schnapp on Nov. 14.
"She just really gets nasty and pounds on the bar, dumping
glasses over and stuff like that."
Mercer usually apologized later for her outbursts,
Zaskey said.
She and her boyfriend, Chuck Desiderio, met Bowman
at the Kennedy estate on Palm Beach after Bowman called them and said
she had been raped. Desiderio also drinks heavily, Zaskey said, but
he's "a quiet drunk."
* A puzzling, determined attempt by Lasch to obtain
the names of people who ate dinner at the home of Smith's mother in
October 1990.
Stephen Kaufman, Jean Smith's attorney, told Lasch
he would try to get the names if she first explained why they were
important. Lasch wrote back threatening to issue a subpoena for the
names unless Kaufman cooperated.
In a letter written July 19, attorney Herbert
Miller Jr. again wondered why the names were important. Miller
represented Smith early in the case, before Black replaced him.
"You persist in failing to offer any relevance
for your request," he wrote Lasch.
Lasch's files contain no indication that the matter
was ever resolved.
*Kennedy Smith case
table of contents
*top
UPDATES
* WILLIAM KENNEDY SMITH, acquitted of rape on Dec.
11 after a 10-day trial: Had planned to begin his residency in
internal medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine
but still has not contacted the school. He was accepted by the school
on March 20, 10 days before his encounter with Patti Bowman.
* ROY BLACK, Smith's lead defense attorney:
Returned to work immediately after Smith's acquittal. He is defending
former Miami Beach Mayor Alex Daoud on federal charges that Daoud
used his office for financial gain. Black said he has been called by
`every nut in the 50 states' since Smith's trial ended.
* MOIRA LASCH, the assistant state attorney who
prosecuted Smith: On vacation until March 2. She occasionally stops
by her office.
* PATTI BOWMAN, the Jupiter woman who said Smith
raped her: Made her first public appearance outside court in an
interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's PrimeTime Live in December, then
returned to caring for her daughter, who will be 3 in April. Bowman
issued this statement through her attorney: `I am trying to go on
with my life as normally as possible. Taking care of my daughter is
the most important part of it. In addition, I am continuing to work
with victims of sexual crimes and am actively involved with the
National Victims Center in Washington, D.C.'
* DAVID ROTH, Bowman's attorney: Returned to more
routine criminal defense cases full time immediately after the trial. |
