Goetz Called ‘Powder Keg’ as Trial Opens

Subway gunman Bernhard H. Goetz was a “walking powder keg” and “a self-appointed vigilante” primed for violence, a prosecutor charged as Goetz’s long-delayed trial for attempted murder opened here Monday.

Goetz’s attorney, contending that the defendant fired to thwart an attempted mugging by four young men three days before Christmas in 1984, argued that Goetz “is neither Rambo nor a vicious predator.”

Wearing a button-down white shirt and blue jeans, the slim electronics engineer whose case has come to symbolize national debate over self-defense vs. vigilantism stared into space or at the jury of eight men and four women.

‘Worse Than the Subway’

“This is worse than the subway,” Goetz told reporters after his character was dissected all day in the courtroom.

Outside the courthouse, a contingent of Guardian Angels praised Goetz while other demonstrators shouted: “Goetz is a racist, not a hero.”

He is charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and gun possession in the shooting of four black youths, one of whom asked him for $5 on a crowded subway train.

Goetz, 39, told police that he shot in self-defense because he was afraid the youths would mug him. All four had prior arrest records, but none had displayed any weapons.

Could Get 30 Years

If convicted, Goetz faces as much as 30 years in prison.

Prosecutor Gregory Waples charged that Goetz was “a tormented man” guilty of “vicious, useless, sadistic violence” in shooting the four, two of them in the back.

“The defendant tried to kill these people not because it was an act of self-defense but because of the defendant’s twisted values that it was right and just,” Waples told the jurors, six of whom have been victims of crimes, three on New York’s subways.

‘Incendiary Tension’

” . . . The defendant is an enigma, a contradiction. Beneath this quiet, seemingly aloof exterior lies the real and complex Bernhard Goetz--a mixture of incendiary tension and explosive self-righteousness. Long before he entered the subway system, Bernhard Goetz was a tormented man, a walking powder keg.”

In his opening statement, Goetz’s lawyer, Barry Slotnick, said his client “was surrounded by four people with the intent to rob him and he took proper and appropriate action. Bernhard Goetz had the right to pull his weapon and fire at the four people seeking to rob him.”

Slotnick stressed that the teen-agers had long criminal records and charged that “the true criminals” would be on the witness stand for the prosecution.

” . . . When it is all over, you will see four vicious predators of the street surrounding Bernhard Goetz and wanting to take his money, and on that you will have no choice but to acquit him.”

Remains Paralyzed

James Ramseur, then 18; Troy Canty, 19; Barry Allen, 18, and Darrel Cabey, 19, were struck by the bullets Goetz fired from his unlicensed .38-caliber revolver on an IRT express train in Manhattan. Cabey, the most seriously injured, remains paralyzed from the waist down and will be unable to testify at the trial because of brain damage caused by the shooting’s complications.

Ramseur is serving an 8-to-25-year sentence in state prison for the 1986 rape and robbery of Gladys Richardson, an 18-year-old Bronx woman. Allen is serving a 1 1/2-to-4-year sentence for probation violation in a 1986 jewelry snatching. Canty is undergoing treatment in a drug rehabilitation center.

In his opening statement to the jury, Waples focused particularly on Cabey. The prosecutor described how Goetz advanced toward Cabey after he had shot the others. “The defendant advanced on him shouting, ‘You look all right. Here’s another,’ ” Waples told the jury.

Called Execution

“The shooting of Darrel Cabey was a cold-blooded execution, as far from a defensive act as heaven is from hell,” Waples added.

He said the prosecution will call 30 witnesses and will introduce tape recordings Goetz made with police officers soon after turning himself in.

Waples disclosed that on one tape Goetz confessed that after shooting Cabey: “If I was thinking, if I wasn’t out of control, I would have put the barrel against his forehead and fired.”

Waples said that Goetz could merely have drawn his gun to frighten away his tormentors in the subway--as he had done once on another occasion when confronted by a threatening situation.

Called Criminals

Slotnick hammered home the theme that the youths Goetz shot were seasoned criminals intent on robbery who continued their crimes even after the subway incident.

“Bernhard Goetz knew he was all alone. Fear, pain, the imminent robbery of Bernhard Goetz caused his mind to go into a frenzy. The train was moving. There were no police in the car. There were four seasoned robbers. You take the gun out and in a moment it is empty,” he told the jurors. “They become a blob in that moment of stress and tension and then it is over. In the imminent moment of stress, the human mind betrays itself and that’s what happened.”

Slotnick said that Goetz did not really tell Cabey, “You look all right. Here’s another,” before shooting him a second time. “Bernhard Goetz in his frenzy and his distress may have recounted a lot of things. It may have been something he wished he did.”