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Bernhard Goetz, New York’s famous ‘‘subway vigilante,’’ will have to stand trial for attempted murder after all. Goetz, it will be recalled, was approached — menacingly, he claimed — by four black youths in a subway train, who asked him for $5. Having been mugged on a previous occasion, he responded by pulling out a revolver (for which he had no permit) and putting a bullet apiece in each of the four. One remains para lyzed from the waist down; the other three all recovered fully, and two of them are currently in prison for crimes they committed after the episode on the subway train. The third chose a drug-rehabilitation program rather than go to jail for a crime he had committed three weeks before the quartet approached Goetz. A grand jury indicted Goetz for attempted murder, after being advised that the question was not whether Goetz acted reasonably in the light of his own previous experi ence (i.e., the earlier mugging), but whether, in the circumstances confronting him on the subway train, he acted as a hypothetical ‘‘reason able man” would have acted. A lower court ruled this instruction incorrect, but the New York Court of Appeals has now upheld it and reinstated the indictment. There is no need to worry that Goetz will actually have to spend any time behind bars. This is one case on which the people of New York, white and black, are firmly united, whether the district attorney knows it or not. It is inconceivable that he could empanel 12 New York jurors without including several who would hold out for acquittal till doomsday. And even if Goetz were convicted, New York ers would march on and tear down any jail in which the authorities tried to keep him. But there remains that interesting theoretical question about the reac tion of a ‘‘reasonable man.” About 10 o’clock one evening recen tly, I was standing on the corner of New York’s Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in a gentle drizzle, looking for a cab. There were two or three other people on the other corners of the intersection, doing the same thing. Presently I noticed a man across the street, walking briskly in my direc tion. He was in his 30s, scruffily dressed and with a four-day growth of beard. At the corner there was a wire-mesh municipal trash basket, filled to the brim with refuse. As he approached it, he suddenly gave it a savage kick with his foot. The trash basket tipped over, spilling its refuse out onto the wet street. Crossing the intersection toward me, he saw another trash basket on my corner and kicked that one over too, with similar results. As he passed he glared at me, furiously and defiantly. The other witnesses and I stared back at him silently, and in a moment he had vanished down the avenue. What would the Court of Appeals’ hypothetical ‘“‘reasonable man” have done? There was no police officer anywhere in sight. The man was obviously in a rage, and any attempt to remonstrate with him could easily resulted in a knife between the ribs. But I will confess to you that, if I had by any chance had a gun on me, I would have pointed it at him and ordered him, very firmly indeed, to clean up the messes he had made. And if he had tried to run away before the last scrap of paper was back in its basket, I would have put a bullet in some non-vital part of his anatomy.
Newspaper Details
Kittanning Leader Times
Kittanning, Pennsylvania, US
Wed, Jul 23, 1986
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Roger M.
USA 01 Jul 2026
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