Beneath the pagoda on the campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, a federal jury last week surveyed the site where on May 4, 1970, four Kent State students were slain by gunfire and nine were wounded during a campus protest against U.S. military involvement in Cambodia. Now, 4½ years after the event that symbolized the agony of a nation divided, eight of the 800 Ohio National Guardsmen on duty at Kent State that day are on trial in Cleveland. Among the charges: assaulting and intimidating the demonstrators and depriving them of their civil rights.
Seven of the defendants, who...