Sometime between midnight between June 18 (Friday) and June 19 (Saturday), 1969, United States Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a narrow bridge causing it to overturn in Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. The crash resulted in the drowning death of his 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped inside the vehicle.
The evening of June 18, 1969, Senator Kennedy left a party on Chappaquiddick Island at 11:15 PM and planned to give Kopechne a ride to a ferry landing and return to Edgartown. He made a wrong turn onto a one way bridge and skidded off of it and into the pond. Senator Kennedy swam free and maintained that he attempted to save Kopechne. Her death occurred sometime between 11:30 PM Friday and 1:00 AM Saturday when the car was discovered by an off-duty deputy sheriff at 12:40 AM Saturday.
Senator Kennedy did not report the accident until 10:00 AM on Saturday, around an hour after a diver pulled her body out of the car at around 9:00 AM on Saturday. At a court hearing on July 25th, he pleaded guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident and received a two month suspended sentence.
An inquiry on January 5, 1970 determined that he had intentionally turned toward the bridge, operating the vehicle “negligently if not recklessly”. The judge stopped short of recommending charges, and a grand jury convened on April 6th and returned no indictments. On May 27, a Registry of Motor Vehicles hearing resulted in Kennedy’s driver’s license being suspended for sixteen months after the accident.
If no man is above the law, why are cases handled differently based upon who is involved?
Opsitnick & Associates, Attorneys at Law 