Abbott Is Guilty

Of manslaughter, not murder

A murder's infamy usually derives from the renown of the victim or the ghastliness of the crime. But when Richard Adan, 22, a budding playwright and a waiter, was stabbed last summer by a restaurant patron, the fascination focused on the killer: Jack Henry Abbott, Marxist, existentialist, prison murderer, author (In the Belly of the Beast) and, beginning a few weeks before Adan's killing, literary celebrity (see ESSAY). On his 38th birthday last week in Manhattan, Abbott was found guilty of manslaughter. Because he admitted that he had killed Adan, the verdict was considered a victory for the defense. Said Defense Lawyer Ivan Fisher: "When they said not guilty on murder two, I was enormously relieved. I was flying." His client, Fisher said, "was speechless, almost dazed."

Still, Abbott will return to the belly of the beast for a long time to come. He has eleven years to serve for parole violations. The manslaughter conviction will bring an additional 8 1/2-to 25-year sentence, and if he is deemed a "persistent violent felony offender" at a hearing this month, he could go back to jail for life.

The verdict of first-degree manslaughter is applicable when the killer is found to have been in the throes of "an extreme emotional disturbance." On the night he was killed last July, Adan had explained to Abbott that his tiny, bohemian cafe lacked a bathroom for customers. He then led the ex-con outside to show him where he could discreetly relieve himself. Yet Abbott's 24 years in violence-steeped prisons and reform schools, Fisher argued, had caused him to mistake Adan's ordinary gestures for provocation. It was a "tragic misunderstanding," Abbott claimed in court, that made him lash out. The jury, which deliberated for two days, rejected a graver guilty verdict of second-degree murder, which assumes an unmitigated intent to kill.

Henry Howard, Adan's father-in-law, was angered but found room for mercy amid his grief. "I never wanted him to get the chair," he said. "Put him on an island. Give him a typewriter. But don't let this guy walk the streets again." Abbott will be sentenced this month.

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