Smith’s Lawyers Want Records Sealed, Denounce Prosecutor

Lawyers for William Kennedy Smith asked a Florida judge on Thursday to seal court records in the rape case against him and denounced the prosecution for its “inflammatory and prejudicial” release of statements from three women who say Smith sexually attacked them.

The attorneys for Smith, who is the nephew of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), said the release of the statements was “the most egregious example” of Assistant State Atty. Moira K. Lasch’s attempts to use publicity to deprive Smith of a fair trial. They asked the court to impose unspecified sanctions against her.

“We can only conclude that the release of the women’s statements at this time would generate the type of sensational publicity that was designed to poison the jury pool by having the public believe that Mr. Smith is a bad person with a propensity to commit sexual misconduct,” said the papers, signed by Miami defense attorneys Roy E. Black and Mark Schnapp.

Smith, 30, is accused of raping a 29-year-old Jupiter, Fla., woman on March 30 at the Kennedys’ Palm Beach estate. He has called the accusation “a damnable lie.”

The filing was the first public comment from the defense since release of the depositions, which alleged that Smith raped one woman and sexually attacked two others between 1983 and 1988.

The lawyers contended that the filing was a “cynical attempt to sandbag Mr. Smith,” and was “compounded by the fact that Mr. Smith cannot rebut these allegations in the public arena” because of a gag order imposed by Judge Mary Lupo on June 19.

Defense attorneys have criticized the prosecutor for filing the papers publicly and several have expressed doubt about whether the massive pretrial publicity would allow Smith to receive a fair trial anywhere in the state. Documents in the case have been open to the public because of Florida’s open-records law.

In the motion, the lawyers accuse Lasch of trying to keep the defense and the judge from finding out that she planned to file the three depositions.

The motion says that during last week’s deposition of Palm Beach Police Sgt. Keith Robinson, Lasch prevented Robinson from answering a defense lawyer’s question on whether he knew of other alleged sexual misconduct.