This was negligent homicide, vehicular manslaughter, and just plain murder. Not one of the lawyers who were immediately on the scene with Kennedy was even sanctioned, never mind disbarred. They literally sat on the beach strategizing while Kopechne died.
Ted was not even a licensed driver at the time, and once the fix was in, he received the mildest of reprimands, couldn't even be called a slap on the wrist.
These simple facts were available even in the Massachusetts press. So what did the massholes who vote this foul beast in term after term do? They got together in demonstrations of sympathy .... for Ted ... not his victim.
Anybody else would have done 20 years for manslaughter. A married man, drunk, goes parking with a young girl. A cop approaches to check out the car and he speeds off. Later the car goes into a channel. He immediately saves himself and abandons the girl, according to experts in an air bubble that lasted some 25 minutes. He walks past four homes without trying to get use of a telephone to notify authorities and swims home. The authorities perform no autopsy even though there was blood on her dress and nose which was inconsistent with drowning. He was found at an inquest to have been driving negligently but that information was withheld from a grand jury. It looked like the hands of friends in high places was screwing up the process at every level. By not going to the authorities he avoided a breath test and since no one determined the reason for the blood, he avoided questions of whether he did violence to her before they went into the water, which would have been a murder charge.
And that right there, FRiend, is why I have zero respect for the “good” people of Massachusetts.
How they can square their consciences with being represented nationally by a murderer is something I will never understand, and frankly I don’t want to try that hard.