Word: metzger
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...Portland, Dees and colleague Elden Rosenthal are asking a $10 million punitive judgment against WAR and the Metzgers. A member of WAR's Portland affiliate, East Side White Pride, was convicted last year of murder in the 1988 beating death of Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian man; two other members were convicted of first-degree manslaughter in the case. Metzger, a television repairman, and his son run WAR from their family's home in Fallbrook, Calif., north of San Diego. The organization's cable-television show, Race and Reason, is carried on 50 cable-access channels...
...link between the Metzgers and the Portland murder, Dees alleges, was WAR national vice president David Mazzella, 20. The senior Metzger sent Mazzella to Portland in September 1988, the civil rights advocate charges, to organize East Side White Pride into a more militant street-fighting group. Dees' evidence includes a letter from John Metzger to Portland members that says Mazzella is coming "to show you how we operate." Dees charges that Mazzella promptly led the local racists out to beat up black and Hispanic victims...
...case. In an amicus curiae brief, the chapter urged that charges involving "negligent" and "reckless" speech be dropped, reasoning that a finding for the plaintiff on those grounds could have a chilling effect on First Amendment freedoms. A.C.L.U. lawyer Michael H. Simon adds, however, that adequate proof that Tom Metzger intended to cause serious harm by sending agents to Oregon would void his concern...
Acting as his own lawyer, WAR leader Metzger is casting himself as a beleaguered populist, but not an instigator of violence. "I'm a white racial separatist," Tom Metzger says, "and I can sit down with any person, white, black or Oriental, and talk about it." Metzger's easygoing cracker-barrel manner in Portland is belied by the angry messages he tapes for WAR telephone lines. There he calls nonwhites "mud people" and "assorted scum"; attorney Dees is "Morris the pervert"; trial judge Ancer L. Haggerty, who is black, is an "Uncle Tom"; and the trial, says Metzger...
Dees will attempt to introduce in evidence other Metzger tapes, including one in which the senior Metzger observes that those who killed Seraw performed a "civic duty." If Dees convinces the jury there is a vicarious liability connection and wins a heavy award, Metzger will probably lose his family's home and the WAR offices. Future earnings could also be attached, as they were in the Klan case. The Klan, says Dees, "hardly exists...