Word: goetz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first it seems odd that something so irrelevent to the facts of the case would take up the not-so-valuable time of commentators on this month's not guilty verdict for Goetz. Weren't there enough actual problems raised by the case--questions of the applicability of confessions, and the bounds of self-defense--without dealing with the larger, tangential issues of racism? While the facts are crucial, there are also good reasons why critics have focussed on the hypothetical...
...Goetz case is not remotely like a lynching, but is rather the overreaction of a paranoid crime victim; a victim whose attackers were Black. It is precisely because there is no certain culprit--only a frazzled electrical engineer and a violent society--that this case is argued in terms of the hypothetical...
...verdict in the Goetz case does present an example of how subtle racism--the kind that is captured in statistical surveys--can play itself out in a tangible way. When courts consider the racially-linked paranoia of a crime victim, race becomes an issue. When courts indulge this paranoia, the verdict has aspects of race...
...principal reason for the verdict, and the salient feature of the Goetz trial is that the jury defined self-defense in terms of Goetz's own disturbed mind. Thus, the jury was forced to consider justice, not in terms of objective standard--which may be free of racial motivations--but in the terms of a frightened city dweller who had previously been mugged by Blacks. There was no effort made to describe the appropriate response when four tough looking men of any color surround a person on the subway...
...city with racial tensions, we cannot allow for excessive response, especially if partly motivated by hatred of Blacks. In his confession, Goetz did not espouse self-defense, but revenge. He shot one of his aggressors in the back...