The four students killed at Kent State have been buried for 4½ years. But the restless search for justice for them and nine others wounded by Ohio National Guardsmen seems likely to haunt the U.S. on through history. What was apparently the last chance for a criminal court to set the matter to rest ended last week when Federal Judge Frank J. Battisti ordered an acquittal on technical grounds for eight Guardsmen defendantseven though, he added, they may not have been "justified in discharging their weapons."
The case had reached Battisti's federal court in Cleveland through a complex series of events....