Court Sides With City in Kennedy Photographs Case

A state appeals court has overturned a $450,000 judgment against the city of Los Angeles for failing to return photographs that police confiscated after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal on Monday reversed the 1996 award on grounds of “prejudicial juror misconduct.”

The reversal was a setback for Scott Enyart, 46, who contends he took the photographs as a teenager as he stood atop a table and captured the moment when Kennedy was shot. Enyart said he will appeal the decision to state court or prepare for a new trial.

But Skip Miller, a private attorney hired by the city, said the reversal was “a sweeping vindication of how the LAPD handled the Robert F. Kennedy investigation.”

An unusual element of the appeal was Miller’s own involvement in the jury tampering issue.

A State Bar of California judge ruled last month that Miller violated State Bar rules by speaking to a juror in the case. State Bar prosecutors are seeking a two-year suspension of Miller’s license.

Miller has acknowledged that he met with a juror during the trial, but said he did not think it was wrong because the juror had been excused by the court clerk.

The dispute between Enyart and the city stems from June 5, 1968, when Enyart was 15 and on assignment for his Fairfax High School newspaper. Kennedy, who was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, was shot to death in the Ambassador Hotel pantry by Sirhan B. Sirhan.

Enyart said he took three rolls of film, capturing scenes of the senator falling and the pandemonium that followed, but that the film was taken by police. He sued, alleging the city either lost or destroyed his valuable historical documents and then tried to cover it up.

City lawyers claimed that Enyart had been at the Ambassador but had taken only one roll of film and could not have captured the pivotal seconds of the assassination because he was not in the pantry where Kennedy was shot.