My Lai Lawyer On Television

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32308, 28 May 1970, Page 15

My Lai Lawyer On Television

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, May 27. The lawyer for one of the soldiers accused in the alleged My Lai massacre said last night that pre-trial news coverage and “political” pressure on the United States Army made a fair trial impossible, the Associated Press reported.

Mr Frank McGee, whose client, Specialist Fourth Class William Doherty, is charged with premeditated murder, made the charges on a television programme seen throughout the United States. The lawyer took issue with a charge made on the programme by Seymour Hersh, a journalist whose investigative report on the My Lai incident won him a Pulitzer Prize. Hersh said Mr McGee’s television appearance also amounted to pre-trial publicity, but Mr McGee said: “I’ve decided to do things like this because of people like President Nixon who took it upon himself to characterise the incident as a massacre . . . during a press conference . . .” Mr McGee said that to protect the rights of those charged in the alleged killings, there should have been no news coverage of the incident. He said that Hersh

was relying on the testimony of others, which he called hearsay, and had no first-hand knowledge of what took place at My Lai. Hersh said that he had considered the possible harm that pre-trial accounts of the incident might have on defendants but decided that “the importance of this story to America far outweighed the possible damage to a number of men and officers who were going to be charged.” Mr McGee then said: “I still believe that in the military a man accused is presumed to be guilty and that he’s got to come forward and prove his innocence. “And knowing very well that (the) military . . . generally run scared as hell when it comes to political problems, the *otal ball of wax (all parts of the situation) in my opinion raises serious questions about whether these people can get a fair trial.”