Opinion ID: 400903
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Kennedy and the Trial of Spain

Text: 6 Spain was brought to trial on the perjury charge in February 1981, and Kennedy was to figure behind the scenes of a hearing held in connection with that trial. At the trial, Marie Falco, Cunningham's secretary at Sweeney, Cunningham & Krieg, P. C., testified for Spain. She stated that in January 1978 Spain had reported to her the substance of his IRS interview, that at that time he said he had denied to the IRS that he had paid Cunningham $2000 in cash, and that she had prepared a memorandum to record this contemporaneous report. Falco produced such a memorandum, dated January 25, 1978, and it was admitted into evidence. The government, however, suspecting that Falco's testimony and the memorandum had been fabricated by Cunningham and Falco, obtained a court order on February 12 requiring Sweeney, Cunningham & Kreig, P. C., to produce the typewriter on which Falco claimed to have typed the memorandum. Later that day the firm produced the typewriter, which was equipped with a virtually new ribbon. Since it was possible that the predecessor ribbon might have revealed that the Falco memorandum had been typed recently rather than three years before, as claimed, a separate hearing was held on February 13-19 to determine whether anyone had tampered with the typewriter before it was produced. 7 At the hearing, Gay McCreery, a receptionist at Sweeney, Cunningham & Kreig, P. C., testified on February 17 that the typewriter was generally located at her desk, but that it was rarely used. She stated that the ribbon had been changed a month before in connection with a servicing of the machine, and that since then she had used the machine only to type a short memorandum and to address a number of envelopes for Cunningham on February 12. The government responded that afternoon, February 17, by obtaining a subpoena directing the firm to produce these envelopes; McCreery returned on February 18, however, to testify that she had been unable to locate them. On February 19, Cunningham testified that on February 16, i.e., the day before the subpoena was served, he no longer needed the envelopes, and that he therefore had thrown them into a garbage can outside his building. The hearing ended inconclusively; no findings of fact were made. 8 The Spain trial ended in a mistrial when the jury was unable to agree on a verdict. When the government announced its intention to retry Spain, he agreed to plead guilty to criminal contempt, a lesser offense, and to testify against Cunningham. Thereafter, McCreery testified before the grand jury about a conversation she had had with Kennedy before her testimony at the hearing on February 18. She told the grand jury: 9 Mr. Kennedy told me that I would probably be questioned about the envelopes. I was not to worry about the envelopes, the envelopes were safe. The envelopes are his responsibility they were not my responsibility. He then said that the government had not been helpful to them, and if the government wanted the envelopes they would have to find them. 10