"Not Guilty"

By Otto Friedrich

CONGRATULATIONS! read the placard held high by a muscular white man in a checked shirt. BERNIE GOETZ WINS ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS!

"Goetz is a Nazi!" shouted a nearby black man in his 20s.

CRIMINALS, WATCH OUT, promised another sign, WE'LL GET YOU.

"New York will reap the wind, that is certain," a black minister warned.

That was the scene of shouting and shoving outside a Manhattan courtroom last week at the end of what Judge Stephen Crane 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.

Goetz stood utterly motionless while Jury Foreman James Hurley pronounced 17 times the words "Not guilty." Not guilty of the attempted murder of Troy Canty, 20, and Barry Allen, James Ramseur and Darrell Cabey, all 21, even though the reedy, bespectacled gunman had said in a taped confession that he "wanted to murder" all of them. Not guilty of assault against any of them, not even Cabey, left paralyzed and brain damaged. The courtroom audience gasped at several of the verdicts and at the end applauded.

A squad of Guardian Angels in red berets helped propel the 39-year-old electronics technician through the turbulent crowds outside and hustle him back to his bachelor apartment. Still ahead lies a September sentencing of up to seven years in prison for illegal possession of a gun, plus multimillion- dollar damage suits filed against him by three of his four victims.

The jurors claimed that there were no racial elements in their decision and that no one should read such implications into it. "We were doing nothing more than what we were charged by the judge to do," said Juror Diana Serpe. "We weren't trying to send a message to the public."

But the 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 idea naturally occurred to a number of New Yorkers, particularly blacks, who can cite several recent cases of whites going unpunished for the deaths of blacks. "It was a terrible and grave miscarriage of justice," said Benjamin L. Hooks, the executive director of the N.A.A.C.P., which is considering a federal suit on the ground that the four youths' civil rights were violated.

A number of legal experts are worried about prospective abuses of the law. "The message scares me," said David Austern, director of education at the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. "It says that potential victims can use deadly force whenever they want." New York City officials hastened to reject that view. "Some will take this as a signal that vigilantes are acceptable, but we will not permit that," said Mayor Ed Koch. Black Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward grimly added, "No one has a license to go out and hunt anyone -- black, green, yellow or whatever."

The central issue in the seven-week trial was not just whether Goetz feared that the four youths were about to rob him but also what a "reasonable man" would do in his own defense. Only one of the four victims, Canty, actually approached Goetz and asked him for money. All four had police records, but Goetz could not know that. Two of them carried screwdrivers because they were planning to break into some video machines, but Goetz could not know that either. He could only look at them -- he said that Canty was smiling and had "shiny eyes" -- and guess what might happen next. Having been mugged and seriously injured by three black youths in 1981, Goetz took out his .38-cal. revolver and started firing.

Assistant District Attorney Gregory Waples strenuously argued that a reasonable man would avoid a confrontation, or at least would show his gun before firing it. Goetz, said Waples, was full of "blind, self-righteous, volcanic fury." Far from acting reasonably, he had attempted a "cold-blooded execution."

The only principal who testified fully was Canty, neatly attired in a suit. He did admit that he had a police record for theft and was in a drug- rehabilitation program, but he said nobody had harassed or threatened Goetz at all. He had just politely asked, "Mister, can I have $5?" Defense Lawyer Barry Slotnick called Canty a "liar."

"That day on the subway . . . you weren't wearing that nice suit and tie, were you?" Slotnick demanded.

"No, I wasn't," Canty agreed.

Cabey was physically unable to testify, and Allen took the Fifth Amendment, but the most important non-witness was Ramseur, who bristled under Slotnick's questions about his criminal record, particularly his conviction for the rape of a pregnant woman. When Ramseur finally refused to answer any more questions, Crane sentenced him to six months in jail for contempt. Crane ordered all of Ramseur's testimony stricken, but his appearance undoubtedly had its effect on the jury. "He had so much pent-up rage," Juror Serpe told the New York Daily News. "He reminded me of a caged animal . . . I had a nightmare about him . . . I woke up feeling drained."

Like several of the jurors, Serpe judged Goetz in the light of his previous mugging. "I was undecided at first, but one thing that changed my mind was the judge's instructions that what is reasonable can be related to past experiences. Bernhard Goetz had some violence in his past experiences. What is reasonable for him might not be reasonable for me."

Like other jurors, she found herself able to disbelieve a key part of Goetz's taped confession, in which he stated he had approached Cabey and said, "You don't look so bad, here's another," and then fired again. "Did that really happen, or did he just think he said that?" Serpe wondered. "He was so agitated . . . He just wasn't being rational."

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."

One of the commonest accusations was that if Goetz had been black and his victims white, he would have been severely punished, which may be true. But few recall the case of Austin Weeks, then 29, a black who was riding a subway train through Brooklyn in April 1980 when he was accosted by two white youths, both 17. One of them, Terry Zilimbinaks, leaned over Weeks in his seat and uttered a number of racial insults. Weeks took out an unlicensed pistol, according to police, and shot Zilimbinaks dead. Like Goetz, Weeks slipped away unnoticed. Unlike Goetz, he did not turn himself in or confess. Police finally tracked him down six years later. The grand jury refused to indict him, and so he went free. There were few headlines, and the case was quickly forgotten.

With reporting by Roger Franklin and Raji Samghabadi/New York