WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- William Kennedy Smith's attorney attempted to weaken his accuser's credibility Thursday by asking why she removed her pantyhose before the sexual encounter she called rape.
The 30-year-old Jupiter woman burst into tears several times during questioning by defense attorney Roy Black.
Each time, Black asked whether she wanted to take a break.
'No, I really want to get this over with,' she replied. After one such exchange, Judge Mary Lupo said, 'Well there's just a certain amount of emotional display that we're allowed to have.' She then called for a brief recess.
Smith, the 31-year-old nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., is accused of raping the woman at the Kennedy estate March 30.
Testifying for the second day in Smith's rape trial, the woman repeatedly said she did not remember when or why she removed her black Givenchy control-top pantyhose and black slingback shoes.
Another witness testified the woman was wearing the nylons March 30 as she prepared to leave Au Bar in Palm Beach with Smith. After the alleged rape, the shoes and pantyhose were found in the woman's car.
The brown-haired woman, wearing a simple blue suit and white blouse, told the six-member Palm Beach County Court jury she met Smith at the bar March 30, gave him a ride home, then accepted his invitation to see the Kennedy house because 'it's a landmark home.'
The woman said Smith then asked her to go for a walk on the beach and she accepted. She left the beach, she said, when Smith began removing his clothes to go swimming.
It was then, she said, that Smith, who she initially thought was 'a nice, intelligent man,' tackled her on the ground, raped her, then told her, 'No one's going to believe you.'
In a statement to police, the woman said she may have taken off the pantyhose before strolling the sandy beach. She apparently did not have them on during the alleged attack because she testified that Smith pushed up her dress, pulled her panties aside and entered her.
Black suggested she had taken off the pantyhose and shoes in the car before the walk on the sandy beach was ever proposed.
'I don't recall doing that and it would be practically impossible to take them off in my car,' said the woman, who drives a two-seat sports car.
'You wouldn't take off your pantyhose just to see the house, would you?' Black asked.
The woman said she probably would not have, though she does not remember.
'So it had to be for some other reason that you took them off,' Black said.
'I don't know,' the woman responded.
She said she could not remember several details of the evening because, 'I'd been raped. I was scared to death.'
But she was able to remember details such as the brand of champagne she ordered at Au Bar -- Cliquot.
Black also attacked the woman's earlier testimony that she did not consider herself to be on a date with Smith and did not expect to ever date him because he lived in Washington.
In an April statement to police, the woman said that while on the beach, she was thinking, 'Maybe he wants my phone number.'
'You were hoping that he was going to call you up and ask for a date?' said Black.
The woman replied that she only thought he might call as 'a potential friend,' and that her interest was in discussing medical topics with Smith.
He was a medical school student at the time, and has since graduated.
'I'm very interested in medical people because of my daughter,' said the woman, whose 2-year-old daughter was born prematurely and suffers a variety of chronic medical problems.
Black took a few shots at the woman, making sure the jury knew she had seen a psychologist the day before the alleged rape.
'One of your routine appointments?' Black said.
The psychologist had advised her to go out more, 'get a life,' and stop focusing all her attention on her daughter, she said.
When the woman said she did not know if Smith was drunk on the night in question, Black said, 'You've been to plenty of bars in your life haven't you? You even go out with a number of bartenders?'
The woman had said previously she had a close male friend who is a bartender and may have talked to him on the night in question.
Black also hammered away at inconsistencies in the woman's testimony, and at discrepancies between her earlier statements to police and her depositions to Smith's lawyers.
In the initial rape report to police the woman said Smith was able to maintain only a partial erection, but was still able to penetrate her and ejaculate. Black is expected to call medical experts to cast doubts on that.
The woman told police she screamed loudly, facing the Kennedy house while Smith was on top of her.
'I'd seen the senator minutes earlier and I was hoping he'd come help me,' she told police.
But in a later statement she said her face was turned toward the ocean.
Black suggested she changed her story after a sound expert hired by Smith's attorney determined that if she had screamed toward the house, the noise likely would have been audible to some of the dozen inhabitants.
The woman said she did not know of the sound expert's finding.
The woman told her story publicly for the first time Wednesday, sobbing as she said, 'I was yelling 'no' and 'stop' and I tried to arch my back to get him off me and he slammed me back into the ground and then he pushed my dress up and he raped me,' she said. 'I thought he was going to kill me.'
She said during the incident 'I was screaming and I was struggling and he told me to 'stop it, bitch.''
Smith is charged with one felony count of sexual battery, Florida's equivalent of rape, and one misdemeanor count of battery. He faces 15 years in prison if convicted.
Outside the courtroom Wednesday, Smith said, 'Obviously we saw some very sad, and some very dramatic testimony today but I've been living with these allegations, with these damnable lies, for the last eight months. I hope everybody will be patient as I have been and allow me the opportunity, with Roy's help, to defend myself in the coming days.'
The four-women, two-men jury is sequestered and is expectedto deliver a verdict before Christmas.
Smith admits he had sex with the woman but he said she consented. His attorney described the encounter as 'a consensual act of love.'
