Jury Acquits Smith of Rape at Kennedy Estate : Trial: The decision takes only 77 minutes. Accuser’s lawyer says that ‘a verdict does not equate to innocence.’

A Florida jury needed only 77 minutes Wednesday to find William Kennedy Smith not guilty of raping a woman at his family’s estate last March, bringing a swift end to the highly publicized trial.

Clearly jubilant, Smith bounded to his feet and embraced his lawyer, Roy E. Black, in a clumsy bearhug as the verdict was read. Then he returned to his seat, closed his eyes and bowed his head. And, finally, breaking into a wide smile, he turned and squeezed the hands of his mother, Jean, his brother, Steven, and his sisters, Amanda and Kym, who were seated behind him.

Smith was found not guilty of the rape charge and of a separate misdemeanor count of simple battery. His accuser was not in the courtroom when the verdict was read.

Shortly after leaving the Palm Beach County Courthouse, tears streaming down his cheeks, Smith--the nephew of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)--told a cheering crowd: “I want to thank you . . . . I have an enormous debt to the system and to God.”

At a press conference across town, a lawyer for the woman who accused Smith said: “We accept the verdict. But a verdict does not equate to innocence.”

The attorney, David Roth, quoted the woman as saying: “All I have endured is worth it, if I have made it easier for one woman to make what was the only choice I could, so that I could look at myself in the mirror, and more important, my daughter, as she grows up.” The woman has a 2-year-old child.

Prosecutor Moira K. Lasch said she would have no comment. She left the courtroom smiling, escorted by her husband, a dentist employed by Palm Beach County.

One juror, Lea Haller, said she made up her mind on the evidence, and in particular the accuser’s dress. The dress had no grass stains, soil or blood, despite the woman’s claim that the 195-pound Smith had tackled her on the lawn.

“It was the evidence--I made up my mind entirely on the evidence,” Haller, 37, told television station WPTV in West Palm Beach. Haller, who owns a cosmetics wholesale concern, was one of two women jurors who wiped away tears as the verdict was read.

The case burst into the nation’s consciousness last spring, when the woman accused Smith of raping her at the Kennedys’ oceanfront mansion in West Palm Beach on the balmy, moonlit hours before dawn on March 30. It brought saturation news coverage and stirred debates about the treatment of sex crimes and the collision of the rights of free press and fair trial.

The weakness of the state’s case against Smith had become increasingly apparent in recent days and lawyers said the rapid verdict was not surprising.

Although the accuser was a strong witness during her testimony two days last week, Smith was also convincing on the stand Tuesday.

Since no others witnessed crucial events that night and the physical evidence was inconclusive, “you ended up with a reasonable doubt,” said Bruce Rogow, a defense lawyer and law professor at Nova University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. “These cases are always difficult for the prosecution.”

The verdict came after 1 1/2 hours of closing defense arguments in which Black again tried to portray Smith as a man who had become a target because of his celebrated family’s name.

“You can’t find somebody guilty because of the family they come from,” he said.

Black told the jury that the prosecutor “wants you to believe that the logical place to commit a rape of a screaming woman is under the open window of his mother’s bedroom.” Smith’s mother had testified that she had slept in a room above the lawn that night.

Black attacked Lasch’s contention that Smith and the woman were not likely to have agreed to have sex after spending about two hours together that night. “Is it so preposterous that, on spring break in Florida, two people could meet and have sex?” he asked.

In her closing argument, also 1 1/2 hours long, Lasch said Smith had raped the woman because she had turned to leave the estate when he tried to lure her to swim in the ocean with him. “The defendant’s ego cannot take the rejection,” Lasch said.

Smith’s account of the events were “murky,” the prosecutor contended.

The defense also did not explain, Lasch said, how the woman’s underwear could have been “fairly saturated” with Smith’s semen, as tests showed, if she was not wearing it, as he had said, during sex.

She told the jurors that to let Smith go free would be unequal justice. “There is no aristocracy, no class that is above the law,” she said.

Several lawyers said Lasch had made a weak presentation of the case against Smith and had employed a dubious strategy that included once lecturing Judge Mary Lupo on criminal law and, on Tuesday, posing a long series of improper questions that prompted the judge to threaten her with a contempt-of-court citation.

“It was a sad effort, and in the legal community around here the image of that prosecutor’s office is going to suffer,” Rogow said.

But Palm Beach County State Atty. David Bludworth was believed to have felt pressure to bring the charges lest he be accused of knuckling under to the Kennedys--as he alleged had happened in the investigation of the death of a family member, David Kennedy, in 1988. David Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, died of a drug overdose at the Brazilian Court Hotel in Palm Beach. He was a cousin of Smith’s.

But Paul H. Rothstein, a specialist in criminal law at Georgetown University, said he doubts that a sharper prosecutor could have made a difference in the case. “Lawyers aren’t magicians; you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” he said.

In his comments outside the courthouse, Smith, a 31-year-old medical school graduate, praised his mother, Black, the jury, the judge and the siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles who had sat behind him in the courtroom during the 16 days of jury selection and 10 days of the trial.

“I only hope I can be as good a parent to my children as my mother has been to me,” he said, as his mother stood by his side.

His mother told reporters after the verdict that she felt “wonderful.” Although she was not surprised, she said, “I was relieved.”

Later, in Boston, an obviously pleased Sen. Kennedy appeared before television cameras to express his gratitude at the verdict.

”. . . I hope that Willie, whom I love very much, can resume his life and his medical career and that other members of our family who are private persons can regain their privacy.

“If anything positive has come out of all this, it is the renewed sense of closeness of our family and friends, for which I am very grateful,” he said.

The accuser, a single mother, alleged that Smith had asked her to give him a lift home from a trendy Palm Beach saloon, Au Bar, after dancing and drinking in the company of Sen. Kennedy and his son, Patrick.

She said Smith had invited her to the beach, then suddenly chased, tackled and raped her on the mansion’s east lawn. She said she hid in the estate’s pantry, then emerged to confront him but was told: “No one will believe you.”

Supporting her story was testimony of an emergency room physician and her orthopedist, who said she showed signs of injury on her back, rib and leg and had seemed withdrawn and traumatized in the manner of rape victims.

Smith’s version of events, described Tuesday in 4 1/2 hours on the stand, was that the woman had “picked me up” at Au Bar. She eagerly took part in sex with him on a beach blanket and then, about half an hour later, initiated sex a second time, Smith testified.

But the woman flew into a rage when he erroneously called her “Cathie,” he said, and when he later seemed to spurn her, wanting to go to bed alone. He testified that she repeatedly called him “Michael” and spoke in a “bizarre” and “kooky” manner.

In an unusual and rambling 15-minute speech after the verdict, Lupo said heavy media attention in the case had not been an obstacle in getting a fair trial or choosing an impartial jury. In fact, “we had so many jurors,” she said.

The four women and two men on the jury slipped out of the courthouse Wednesday evening by a side entrance without comment. Their average age was 52, and their foreman, Thomas Stearns Jr., 62, is a decorated veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars. None were college graduates.

The charge of rape carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison in Florida. But for a first-time offender the penalty was not likely to have been more than four years.

Smith graduated from Georgetown University Medical School this year. He hopes to begin his residency at the University of New Mexico Medical Center in Albuquerque next month, his family said. School officials said they will talk to Smith before deciding anything.