Word: goetze
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...DECEMBER 22. 1984, an electronics expect named Bernhard Goetz became a hero by pulling out a gun and shooting four teenagers who, he told the conductor of the IRI subway train on which he was riding, tried to rip him off. Then he went to New Hampshire...
...Liberal Haven. New York Gov. Mario M. Cyomo and New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch left compelled to warn the citizenry that the state and city administrations by no means condoned taking the law into one's own hands. The citizenry appeared to take exception to this, giving Goetz a warm welcome and offers of financial assistance when he was extradited from New Hampshire, where he had surrendered to police several days after the incident...
Last Friday, a 23-member grand jury indicted Goetz on four charges--all related to weapons possession. The New York Post went wild: "BERNIE COEIZ." He certainly did the indictment included nothing about attempted, nothing about attempted murder, despite the fact that one of Goetz's victims remains in a coma and is paralyzed from the waist down...
Consider it in two parts, pulling the gun and shooting. The first can plausibly be said to be an act of self-defense. The second is freelance law enforcement. And wrong for all the obvious reasons. Proportionality, to start with: the death penalty, which is what Goetz tried and failed to administer, is reserved for greater crimes than a $5 shakedown. Lack of necessity, for another. Pulling the gun ended the threat. The boys ran. Pulling the trigger was superfluous. Two had to be shot in the back...
Perhaps worst, the punishment was collective. Goetz had been mugged four years ago and had brooded ever since over the lenient treatment his attackers received. These four were paying for more than their own sins. A whole class of muggers got theirs on the downtown express. But the law, which still prevails aboveground, does not permit trial by class. Everyone pays for his sins only. Even criminals cannot remain abstract...