February 26, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
What would we have done? If Kerry Kennedy had lost her drivers’ license and couldn’t do her Humanitarian Work, what would we all have done?
She’s essential to the world. We know that because her brother, Robert Kennedy, Jr., said so at her trial.
Her work is more important than yours or mine or the driver of the tractor trailer she sideswiped in July, 2012 on Route 684 in Westchester County.
The truck she hit could have been a person, but it wasn’t, so that issue took a back seat.
Instead Ms. Kennedy and her attorneys focused on getting her back on the road so she could continue her charity work. And to do it, they used everything they could think of.
This was not a little accident. Terrified witnesses described that day, how Kennedy hit the truck, blew out a tire and kept driving for miles on a smoking tire rim, all the while swerving in and out of lanes, ultimately exiting the highway and reversing smack into a guardrail at an intersection of Route 22.
She was found blacked out at the wheel. Later she admitted she had absolutely no memory of even being on the highway.
She first claimed she probably suffered a "complex partial seizure” on the day of the accident, but after a toxicology report revealed the drug Ambien in her system, she said she probably had taken it accidentally.
So it really wasn’t her fault. I guess that was the theory.
Why anyone would take Ambien, beats me. To each his own.
There are enough horror stories out there about sleep-eating, sleep-driving, sleep-walking and other frightening behaviors from people who have taken Ambien. Everybody has heard them.
But in this case Kennedy is a 54-year-old woman. An attorney. And she says she has been taking the drug for 10 years.
She should have known better. She should have been more careful.
But she wasn’t. And she resented being called on it. She resented having to be held accountable to the law. So she went to trial and she went all out.
Her attorneys said she should have been treated like "Mary housewife,” but Kennedy didn’t want to be Mary housewife and it showed.
Because of Who She Was, Kennedy felt she should be treated differently in the eyes of the law.
It’s an approach to law and life we’ve seen before. Obama has it. Hillary Clinton has it. Eric Holder and Democrats in general have it.
Kerry Kennedy’s brother Robert has it.
It’s an arrogance, a sense of entitlement, a belief you’re smarter than the average bear. And that you’re above every law.
In the end you could say "so what?” or what difference does it make?
Well, it does.
With the arrogance only our president could top, Kerry Kennedy put on a shameful defense at her trial. She won, but who wants to win the way she did?
Not only did Kennedy decide to haul her 85-year-old mother into court in a wheelchair to help make her case, but she spoke at such length about herself and her work as her own character witness that the presiding judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Neary was hanging on the ropes crying uncle!
"There is no question about the work you do,” he said, "but I’m not sure this is the forum to go into this exhaustive detail.”
It went on forever. Friends, family and even an Irish family priest took the stand to attest to her sobriety, honesty and all around niceness.
She didn’t like being wrong.
But her most reprehensible move was to drag her deceased father’s name into that courtroom. As part of her testimony, she explained to the six-member jury and all of the rest of us who her father was and how he died.
Why would she do that? How could she do it?
"Daddy was the attorney general during the civil rights movement and then a senator. I have ten brothers and sisters. My mother raised us because my father died when I was eight. He was assassinated while running for president,” she concluded.
It was sad.
We all know who Bobby Kennedy was.
The entire nation wept when we saw him, cut down in his prime, bleeding on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
None of us could forget that.
And the nation wept when he died 26 hours later.
We all knew who Bobby Kennedy was.
In the two days he lay in repose at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, millions waited on line all night to pay their respects. I was one of them.
We knew who Bobby Kennedy was. It was insulting that his daughter thought she needed to remind us.
But Kerry Kennedy in her arrogance used this tragic event to beat a misdemeanor charge.
And she did beat it. But what a way to win.
To add insult to injury, after her acquittal, in a style Obama has made famous, Kennedy gushed – then lectured.
She expressed gratitude to the justice system for doing right by her. She praised the lawyers who got her off. Then she decided to use the event as a teachable moment for the rest of us, lecturing us on the condition of the court system in America.
Bemoaning the fact that the type of representation she received was not available to every other American who drove while impaired, she said,
"We need to take a hard look at our criminal justice system in the United States to ensure it really is just and that everyone in our country has true access to justice.”
A few days later she told Matt Lauer on the Today show that people who accused her of banking on her family name were wrong, that her innocence and access to competent counsel was what had helped her win her case.
"We’ve got to pass legislation which will allow people to have access to competent counsel no matter who they are.”
But she didn’t win her case because of competent counsel. It was precisely because she exploited her family name.
And she didn’t win because of her innocence. She was found "not guilty,” not "innocent."
So, Ms. Kennedy. Congratulations on your acquittal and shame on you for the way you won.
No, we Americans don’t need legislation to allow us access to competent counsel. We have plenty of competent attorneys in addition to yours, but most importantly we have a right to plead not guilty, just as you had and to have a trial of our peers, just as you had.
That’s not a Kennedy thing. It’s in the U.S. Constitution.
Hold the line, America.