Nation IN BRIEF : FLORIDA : Smith Case Questions Focus on Publicity

The third day of jury selection for William Kennedy Smith’s rape trial focused on pretrial publicity. Defense attorney Roy Black asked potential juror Robert Fleming if he had seen pickets outside the courthouse and if he had watched NBC-TV’s “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend. “It came on . . . I turned it off,” Fleming replied. The show began with a skit satirizing Smith’s attorneys’ questions about potential jurors’ attitudes toward the Kennedy family. Fleming told Black he had not seen members of the Guardian Angels anti-crime group demonstrating outside the West Palm Beach courthouse.