Video: Smith trial documentary (first 10 minutes)

(Wednesday, December 11, 1991, 5:10 p.m. ET) — After deliberating for 77 minutes, a jury acquitted William K. Smith today of charges that he raped a woman at the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach estate one moonlit night last Easter weekend.

The jury returned its verdict at 5:10 p.m., giving startlingly short shrift to the pleas they heard from the prosecutor, Moira K. Lasch, in her final argument barely two hours before.

Waiting to hear the jurors’ decision, Mr. Smith clasped his hands and bowed his head, as if in prayer, as Judge Mary E. Lupo warned that she wanted no histrionics or any “public expression” from anyone upon the reading of the verdict. Grinning Broadly