Case Not Proved

On Harlem's mean streets, the brothers were exemplars of the community's abiding but often unrealized potential. Jonah Perry, 19, was a student at Cornell; Edmund, 17, was headed for Stanford after graduating with honors from New Hampshire's prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy. Yet on a spring night last year, only ten days after graduation, Edmund Perry lay fatally wounded, a police officer's bullet in his abdomen, and his brother Jonah was being sought. Plainclothes Officer Lee Van Houten swore he had been attacked by Edmund and another man, whom the police later identified as Jonah. Authorities claimed the brothers assaulted Van Houten because they wanted money to go to the movies.

The allegations were met with skepticism and anger in Harlem, and last week a Manhattan jury acquitted Jonah of three counts of robbery and assault. Because Van Houten, 25, had been unable to identify Jonah as the other assailant, the prosecution's case depended for the most part on secondhand testimony. A neighbor of the Perrys' stated that Jonah told her he and Edmund had "run into some static" when they attacked a "d.t.," street slang for a + detective. One juror said later that the state's main witnesses "were not believable, not solid."

Defense Attorney Alton Maddox contended that the attempted robbery never took place. The prosecution, Maddox charged, was trying to frame Jonah Perry to avoid murder charges against Van Houten, who in two years as a policeman had an unblemished record. Said Maddox: "The fact that you have a badge and a gun does not allow you to do everything under the sun, and somebody had better send that message to the New York police department."

Veronica Perry, 37, who, according to friends, deserves credit for her two sons' successes, emerged from the courtroom with her arm around the shoulders of the 6-ft. 3-in. Jonah. "They murdered one son," she insisted, "and for that injustice, someone is going to have to pay." An obviously relieved Jonah announced that he planned to pack his bags that very night and head back to Cornell to resume his studies.