Virginia Tech Families Fear Investigators Have Conflicts

RICHMOND, June 22 -- The families of some of the Virginia Tech shooting victims are planning to deliver a pointed message to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) on Saturday: We don't fully trust the state to investigate the massacre that killed our sons and daughters.

The parents, who say they plan to ask Kaine to give them a bigger role on the panel he created to look into the April 16 rampage, say the state-funded commission cannot possibly be impartial in examining the deaths of 32 students and faculty members at a public university.

"I believe the panel itself is invalid, because it has a series of inherent conflicts of interest," said Thomas J. Fadoul Jr., a Vienna lawyer who represents the relatives of 20 victims, one of whom was Fadoul's cousin. "You have the state reviewing state actions, and it cannot be objective per se."

The families' concerns underscore the emotions and the legal and ethical questions that have been raised in the aftermath of the killings by Seung Hui Cho, the worst act of violence by an individual in U.S. history.

H. Lane Kneedler, a former chief deputy Virginia attorney general, said Fadoul's comments about the validity of the state's investigation are misguided because states and the federal government have been creating commissions for decades.

"It would be like saying the 9/11 commission couldn't investigate

9/11," said Kneedler, who helped write Virginia's ethics policies for elected officials. "I can understand why they would want to be part of the process, but it is not a legal conflict" of interest.

In the days after the shooting, Kaine moved quickly to assure the public that the state's investigation would be fair, impartial and free of politics. The governor named eight experts in academia, law enforcement, mental health, psychology and victim services to the panel.

Kaine gave the panel members free rein to investigate Virginia Tech's response to the massacre as well as the circumstances that might have caused it, including whether Cho was treated for mental illness.

But from the start, questions were raised about the panel's impartiality. At the first meeting in May, W. Gerald Massengill, a retired state police superintendent who is the group's chairman, received a private briefing from state and federal law enforcement officials. After the meeting, Massengill told the other panel members that they "should be proud" of the response of the authorities April 16, suggesting that Massengill had his mind made up before the panel's work had even begun.

"I think we know enough about the response to know it was very effective and a very successful response," Massengill told reporters later.

Massengill backed away from his comments, saying he wasn't prejudging the investigation. In an interview this week, he said the panel, which includes former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, is "filled with integrity."