Probe into 1970 Kent shootings rejected

On April 19, Assistant US Attorney General Thomas Perez sent a letter to Alan Canfora, one of the wounded students who now chairs the Kent May 4 Center, saying the department was “unable to re-prosecute this case,” Reuters reported on Tuesday.

“Examiners found the quality of the audio recordings to be poor and found that the distortion, frequency response, and low quality microphone used to make the recording rendered the audio quality insufficient for gunshot analysis,” Perez’s letter said.

Canfora demanded the reinvestigation of the case after he found a copy of a 29-minute recording from Kent State student Terry Strubbe, who recorded the demonstration on a reel-to-reel machine from his dormitory room.

A digital enhancement of the recording reveals “a verbal command to fire” followed by 12.5 seconds of gunfire, Canfora said.

He said the volleys were preceded by what sounded like four gunshots, possibly from a handgun.

“This is the most significant discovery in the investigation. It has always been the central question: was there a command to shoot?” Canfora noted.

“Only now through modern digital technology can we finally answer that question,” he said.

In 2010, Canfora asked the Justice Department for a new investigation in light of the audio evidence.

The Kent State shootings occurred at Kent State University and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970.

The guardsmen fired 67 rounds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Afterwards, hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students. The event also intensified divisiveness over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.

Eight guardsmen were originally charged in October 1974 with depriving the students of their civil rights.

However, US District Judge Frank Battisti later granted the defendants’ motion for acquittal, ruling the government had not proven the charges.

This is while six of the seven surviving victims of the Kent State shooting plan to announce on May 3, the day before the event’s 42nd anniversary, an effort to move the case to an international court.

MP/GHN

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