Word: subway
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...called the "most difficult case of our time." After four days of deliberations, a jury of ten whites and two blacks had just acquitted Bernhard Goetz of all but one relatively minor charge in the 1984 shooting of four black youths who Goetz said had threatened him on a subway train...
...case of People v. Bernhard Goetz raised such basic and emotional questions about a man's right to defend himself, about street crime and racism, that the jury decision on this inherently inconsequential shooting prompted headlines around the world. SUBWAY VIGILANTE CLEARED, said the London Times. SCARY SUBWAY, SELF-DEFENSE, said Tokyo's Sankei Shimbun. "Despite the virtuous denials of the jury," declared Paris' Le Monde, "no one believed, of course, that the verdict would have been the same if the accused had been black and the 'victims' white...
...That day on the subway . . . you weren't wearing that nice suit and tie, were you?" Slotnick demanded...
This was a jury of ordinary people, people who ride the crime-ridden subway and know how things are down there. Six of the twelve had been victims of street crime. Anyone taking a subway ride last week could hear similar views. "I can understand what Goetz did," said Eileen Dudley, a black secretary. "I was held up once. You would do anything in that situation...
...Goetz. What the jury decided was that the parameters for an individual's right to use deadly force in self-defense have been greatly expanded. If you are a young tough kid, carrying a potentially dangerous weapon, possessing a past history of criminal offenses, and you surround a subway passenger and ask him for money, it's open season on you. That's the issue that needs to be discussed. But too many critics of the Goetz opinion discount the fact that white hoods can travel in packs and harass Black people too. By their reasoning, the Black...