The Kennedys: Rehearsal for an Inquest

For all of Edward Kennedy’s legal efforts to avoid what he fears would be a circus-style inquest into the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a sort of rehearsal for an inquest was held last week in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County courthouse. Nearly 200 newsmen and spectators jammed into Judge Bernard Brominski’s courtroom in Wilkes-Barre to hear arguments on whether Mary Jo’s body should be exhumed from a nearby Larksville cemetery for an autopsy. While the proceeding showed that Kennedy’s apprehension was well founded, it also indicated that the lack of a postmortem has contributed to keeping the case alive and controversial.

Edmund Dinis, the Massachusetts district attorney in whose jurisdiction the death occurred last July, seemed determined to compensate—or even over-compensate—for his initial timidity in investigating the biggest case of his life. He allowed his assistant, Armand Fernandes, to hint in the course of cross-examination that Mary Jo might have died from a skull fracture or “manual strangulation” rather than drowning. Summoning such witnesses as Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena, Dinis adumbrated some of the testimony he would presumably pursue if a formal inquest is held in Massachusetts.

Mary Jo’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Kopechne, are fighting an autopsy, arguing that Dinis should prove that there is legitimate suspicion of foul play before exhuming their daughter’s body. Dinis maintains that the suspicion already exists, raised by the delay before the death was reported and the apparent contradictions in Kennedy’s public accounting of the episode. To underscore discrepancies regarding the exact time of the accident, Dinis played a tape recording of Kennedy’s televised explanation of the event. Kennedy himself was in Europe last week for a meeting of the North Atlantic Assembly. Dinis summoned none of the others present at the Chappaquiddick party.

A central question was whether an autopsy would be of any medical value three months or more after the body was embalmed and buried. The Kopechnes’ lawyers called Dr. Werner Spitz, deputy chief medical examiner for Maryland and an expert on drowning cases, who said that anatomical evidence of drowning would already have disappeared.* Spitz argued that Mary Jo did in fact drown—but not immediately. A pinkish froth around the nose, he said, indicated that she “remained alive for a certain time” while the car was under water in Poucha Pond. “She breathed, that girl,” Spitz said. “She wasn’t dead instantaneously.” Three other pathologists testified that even now an autopsy might yield explicit evidence on the cause of death.

Personal Defense. The original finding that drowning was the cause is vulnerable because of the examination’s cursory nature. Dr. Donald R. Mills, the associate county medical examiner who signed Mary Jo’s death certificate, admitted he inspected the body for only ten minutes. Fernandes argued that, regardless of whether an autopsy could prove drowning, Mills’ examination did not determine if Mary Jo could have died of some other cause.

Last week’s hearing could not avoid the bizarre touches that have marred the case from the beginning. Skindiver John Farrar, who recovered Mary Jo’s body from the submerged car, turned up with a lawyer who promptly distributed full biographies of himself and his client to reporters. When Dr. Mills claimed that Dinis was to blame for not ordering an immediate autopsy after the accident, Dinis took the stand to testify that he had indeed wanted an autopsy. But, said he, by the time he had decided to order one the day after Mary Jo’s death, he was informed that the body had been flown back to Pennsylvania. Actually, the body was still waiting in a plane at the Martha’s Vineyard airport.

After the hearing—which ended with Judge Brominski reserving a decision —Dinis continued to defend himself. He questioned Dr. Mills’ character and honesty, claiming “he’s shirked his responsibility and tried to push it off onto us.” Replying to the argument that he is acting out of personal ambition or malice toward the Kennedys, Dinis told TIME’S Greg Wierzynski: “Politically, this is not good for me. It cannot do anyone any good to be involved. This is the home state of the Kennedys, and they are loved. How can anyone who is involved in prosecuting or investigating them come out with any advantage? A vendetta against the Kennedys? Ridiculous!” His fulminations aside, Dinis was following respectable legal procedure in seeking the autopsy —though he could have saved both Kennedy and the Kopechnes much grief by ordering the examination on the day of the death, while the body was still in his jurisdiction.

*An editorial in the British Medical Journal last week also concluded that an autopsy would probably not be useful now, particularly in determining whether the girl drowned.