Murder Count Rejected in N.Y. ‘Vigilant’ Case : Officials Say They Accept Panel’s Ruling

Top officials of New York City and state late Friday said they accept the decision of the Manhattan grand jury that refused to indict subway “vigilante” Bernhard H. Goetz for attempted murder.

New York Mayor Edward I. Koch, besieged by reporters in a corridor at City Hall, told them:

“I have always said it is for the grand jury to decide whether he is a victim or a villain. I would assume they have found he exercised the right of self-defense, in which case he is a victim.”

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo offered his reaction after an address in Manhattan to the New York Bar Assn.

“I think there will be a temptation for some people to read into what happened here that the grand jury is saying it’s all right to carry a gun and waste somebody,” he said.

“That is not responsible. The process has worked. The system has worked. I am going to assume that they (the grand jurors) did it responsibly. Responsibly means that they heard the evidence and concluded this was a reasonable attempt to defend himself.”

While refusing to comment directly on the grand jury’s action, Andy Kendzie, an official of the National Rifle Assn. in Washington, pledged a stepped-up campaign to ease gun licensing regulations in New York City so more people can carry weapons. He charged that the city’s present law “has worked to the detriment of a lot of law-abiding citizens.”

In government offices, in the depths of the subways, in Goetz’s own neighborhood, reaction to the grand jury, which did indict him on weapons charges, was sharply divided.

“The tendency for everyone to glorify him is frightening,” said Portia Franklin, a 37-year-old radio producer who lives in Goetz’s apartment building.

“I had a feeling it would go this way,” said another neighbor, who gave her age as 62, but refused to identify herself. When asked about the decision, she added: “I do agree.”

Most Tenants Pleased

Most tenants who walked by a handful of reporters and photographers in the cold outside the building indicated that they were pleased that the grand jury acted as it had, but would not discuss it further.

A 30-year-old secretary who works in the neighborhood, and who also declined to be identified, had this to say about the grand jury’s failure to indict Goetz for attempted murder:

“It means, you’re going to have a dark city on your hands because people are going to shoot just because they think someone’s going to mug them.”

The sharp division of opinion over the case was also evident at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where 19-year-old Darryl Cabey, the most seriously injured of the youths who confronted Goetz in a subway car on Dec. 22, lay in a coma, severely brain-damaged, paralyzed from the waist down and fighting pneumonia.

‘Death Wish Cards’

Randolph Scott-McLaughlin, a lawyer for Cabey’s family, said the teen-ager had received “death wish cards” mailed to the hospital with such bitter messages as “we hope your wheelchair has a flat tire,” or get well cards, with the “get well” crossed out.

Other sources at the hospital said, however, that Cabey also had received some genuine get well cards, including one with good wishes from 100 signers.

Howard R. Meyer, the lawyer for 19-year-old Troy Canty, another of the youths involved in the incident with Goetz, said his client “has gotten so much hate mail and abusive telephone calls that he barely comes out of his apartment.”

“It has reached the point where he is afraid to ride the subways down to my office,” Meyer said.

New York psychologist Herbert J. Freudenberger, who has written books on anger, said Friday that it was important to view the Goetz case in a broader context.

“I think it’s more an issue of victims . . . and impotent outrage,” Freudenberger said.

New York psychiatrist Dr. David Brook agreed. “I think people have mixed feelings about it,” he said.

Fear Shooting

“The fear is that everyone is going to bring out the gun and start shooting. I doubt that will happen, but that is the fear.”

The chairman of the board of the National District Attorneys Assn., San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, conceded that the grand jury’s refusal to indict Goetz on major charges could serve to encourage other “vigilante” actions.

But, he said, “it would be unfair to both the grand jury and the prosecutor to try to second guess them. . . . One could speculate that they were influenced by public opinion, but neither I nor anyone else outside the case is in a position to make that assertion.

“One thing this case has done is point up how serious a violent crime problem we have,” he said. “Something has to be done to ensure the safety and security of the public in a better fashion, no matter what the cost.”

UCLA law professor Julian Eule, a specialist in criminal law, cautioned that any encouragement that the grand jury’s action might have given would-be “vigilantes” could be tempered by the charge it did render for illegal possession of a weapon. “It may still dissuade people from walking around with weapons,” he said.

Times Staff Writers Philip Hager and Robert L. Jackson and Researcher Siobhan Flynn contributed to this story.