Kerry Kennedy Testifies She Accidentally Took Sleep Medication

WHITE PLAINS - Testifying in her own defense, Kerry Kennedy said on Wednesday that she had accidentally taken sleep medication before crashing her car in July, and that the drug's effects did not become apparent to her until well after the accident.

Ms. Kennedy's testimony came in the third day of a misdemeanor trial at Westchester County Courthouse, on charges of driving under the influence of a sleeping pill. Much of her time on the witness stand was spent detailing her morning routine that day, as she sought to explain how she mistook her sleeping medication for a different drug she took for a thyroid condition, and how her actions early that morning demonstrated that her mind and judgment were not incapacitated in any way.

But Ms. Kennedy, under the questioning of one of her lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, also made clear her place in American political royalty.

'I grew up in McLean, Va., with 10 brothers and sisters,' she began. 'Mother raised us because my father died when I was 8.'

Mr. Lefcourt asked Ms. Kennedy to explain what happened to her father.

'He was killed when he was running for president,' she replied.

Ms. Kennedy, a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, and the former wife of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, was arrested shortly after 8 a.m. on July 13, 2012, as she was driving from her home in Bedford to a gym in Armonk. After her car sideswiped a tractor-trailer on Interstate 684, a police officer found her inside her Lexus S.U.V., stalled in a left-turn lane on Route 22 near the Armonk exit, slumped over the steering wheel. Toxicology tests showed she had trace amounts of the sleep medication Zolpidem, Ambien's generic equivalent, in her system.

Ms. Kennedy said she had set aside a container of Zolpidem on her kitchenette counter because she was preparing for a trip to California and then overseas, and typically used it to help her sleep while traveling.

Her lawyers showed the container, as well as an identical container with the thyroid medication; both were brown and had white caps, and both came from CVS. The pills were also similar; both were white and oval, with one a bit larger than the other.

She described how she remembered making cappuccino that morning, following what she described as a 15-to-20-step process. She testified that she drank her cappuccino, took her pills and ate some carrots. She packed four bags and headed to her car.

She said she remembered driving from her driveway onto Chestnut Ridge Road, and then getting onto Interstate 684, and then could remember nothing else.

'I remember getting on 684 and have no memories after that,' she testified. 'Let me just say my memories at this time are really a jumble.'

She added that the first thing that she could recall was a police officer knocking on the door of her car.

In her cross-examination, an assistant district attorney, Doreen Lloyd, questioned Ms. Kennedy's account of accidentally taking the wrong pill and then having no memory of the car accident or the moments immediately preceding it. After Ms. Kennedy acknowledged taking Zolpidem for a decade, Ms. Lloyd sought to underscore the frequency of her usage, pointing out that in 2010, Ms. Kennedy had received prescriptions for Zolpidem in consecutive months, in July and August.

'I'm not the most organized person, and I might have lost it,' Ms. Kennedy explained.

Ms. Lloyd then proceeded to march Ms. Kennedy through her routines on the morning of the accident, focusing on whether she took her medication before or after the cappuccino and carrots. The sequence that Ms. Kennedy detailed in court did not match an earlier statement she had given on the matter, but Ms. Kennedy responded, 'These are details a normal person wouldn't hold onto a year and a half afterward.'

Continuing under cross-examination, Ms. Kennedy again recalled driving almost a mile along a country road to Interstate 684, but she could not recall swerving into the grass on the entrance ramp, as witnesses had testified she had done.

'You did not feel tired? You did not feel drowsy? You did not feel disoriented?' Ms. Lloyd asked in quick succession, trying to establish that Ms. Kennedy should have felt the onset of the Zolpidem and stopped driving before she became incapacitated.

To each question, Ms. Kennedy answered, 'I did not.'