3 Howard Beach Youths Convicted : Found Guilty of Manslaughter in Death of Black; 4th Acquitted

After 12 days of deliberations, a jury Monday found three white teen-agers guilty of manslaughter in the death of a black man who was pursued onto a busy highway near Howard Beach and killed by a car--a case that became a national symbol of urban racial violence.

The jurors acquitted Michael Pirone, 18, one of the four defendants, of all charges.

Jon Lester and Scott Kern, both 18, were cleared of second-degree murder charges but were convicted of manslaughter, assault and conspiracy. Jason Ladone, 16, also was found guilty of manslaughter and assault. The manslaughter charges could carry a maximum 15-year prison penalty. Only Lester and Kern had been charged with murder.

Shouts and Gasps

As the verdict was read, there were shouts of joy and then gasps in the huge courtroom. Three people--two whites and one black--stood and yelled, “Murderers!” They were dragged from the courtroom by security guards, who later said the protesters had identified themselves as members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Other spectators began to raise banners and, to maintain order, the judge immediately declared a recess.

Pirone sighed with relief when he heard the verdict. Lester and Ladone remained outwardly emotionless. Kern shut his eyes and seemed close to tears. Kern’s parents and his younger sister began to wail.

The three-month-long trial centered on the events of last Dec. 19 and 20, when a car with three black men broke down near Howard Beach in Queens.

Michael Griffith, 23, a sometime construction worker, was killed when he was pursued into traffic by a gang of white teen-agers who confronted the black men in front of a pizzeria. Earlier, the teen-agers had been drinking at a party. Griffith’s companions, Cedric Sandiford, 37, a mechanic’s assistant, and Timothy Grimes, 18 and unemployed, were beaten with tree limbs and a baseball bat.

Racial Tensions Heightened

The case galvanized civil rights activists, heightened racial tensions in New York City and resulted in Special New York State Prosecutor Charles J. Hynes’ being named to prosecute the controversial case.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who selected Hynes after black civil rights activists and lawyers demanded that the case not be prosecuted by the Queens County District Attorney’s Office, said after the verdict: “In this state, we live by the rule of law. It operated here, apparently without fear or favor. That is all we can ask.”

Earlier Monday, black demonstrators, using the Howard Beach trial as a rallying point against alleged racism in New York City, blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, stalled subway trains and created widespread difficulties for thousands of homebound commuters.

At one point, the line of cars seeking to cross the bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn stretched almost two miles. Other demonstrators rode the subways and pulled emergency cords on some trains, forcing them to stop and causing thousands of riders to arrive home late.

At least 73 protesters were arrested on charges of obstructing government administration and criminal trespass.

In the crowded Queens courtroom, haggard relatives on both sides of the case waited tensely as the jury announced its verdict at about 8:30 p.m.--a year and a day after violence made Howard Beach, an isolated, predominantly white Queens neighborhood of small homes, a focus of national attention.

Earlier Monday, the presiding judge, state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Demakos, turned down demands by defense lawyers for a mistrial after press reports appeared saying that Nina F. Krauss, the jury’s forewoman, had tried to sell her trial diary to three New York newspapers.

Newspaper editors said they were offered the diary by Krauss’ boyfriend, a local television field producer, who said Krauss had authorized him to act as her agent. He was suspended Monday by the station where he worked because his actions violated its policies.

Reports Ruled Hearsay

But Demakos ruled that reports of the trial diary were hearsay and constituted insufficient grounds for a mistrial. Defense lawyers charged that the juror could be interested in prolonging the deliberations and in having a controversial verdict to help sell her story.

After the verdict was announced, prosecutor Hynes said: “The defendants have been stripped of any pretense of innocence . . . . I will ask Justice Demakos to impose the maximum sentence on these defendants.”

Hynes said the jury had sent a message. “They said today that they won’t tolerate hatred of anyone which is based on gender, race, origin or anything that makes us different. Mindless intolerance must end.”

Mayor Edward I. Koch said the jury came in with a verdict “which I think most people would say was just . . . . I think we should be very proud of that jury.”

But Gabriel Leone, Kern’s lawyer, said he was in “total shock.”

Pirone’s lawyer, Steven Murphy, spoke bitterly of the prosecution even though his client was acquitted. “The governor and the mayor wanted this prosecution to keep the peace nationally,” he charged.

Activists Galvanized

Not only in New York City, but across the nation, the beatings and the death of Griffith spurred civil rights activists and brought about a painful re-examination of race relations.

At the trial, bar association observers sat in the courtroom monitoring defense lawyers’ tactics.

Even the process of jury selection was so bitterly contested that Demakos issued an unusual ruling. The judge decided that defense lawyers were using their peremptory challenges to exclude blacks and ordered them to give non-racial explanations when they tried to dismiss blacks from the pool of prospective jurors.

The jury, with four alternates, that eventually was chosen was made up of two blacks, seven whites, two Asian Americans, three Latinos, a Caribbean American and a native of Guyana of Indian descent. Just before he turned the case over to the jury, Demakos replaced the single black juror, who reported an emergency illness in his family, with a black alternate juror.

In his closing arguments, Hynes told the jurors that all four defendants were guilty of “wanton, callous and brutal” acts leading to Griffith’s death.

No Passport Needed

The special prosecutor charged that the defense was trying to force the jury to answer an “irrelevant question: What were ‘they’--Griffith, Grimes and Sandiford--doing in Howard Beach? As if they needed a passport to enter Queens from Brooklyn.”

Hynes said their attackers knew nothing of the victims’ criminal records or anything about them “except that they were black.” Sandiford had once been convicted of a weapons charge in connection with an assault in Virginia on his estranged wife. Grimes has several convictions, including one for robbing an elderly couple with a phony gun.

Hynes asked the jury to picture how the three black men were chased by the gang of teen-agers armed with a baseball bat, sticks and a metal object.

“Michael Griffith turned onto 90th Street and was helplessly propelled down a tunnel, a chasm of death,” Hynes said, describing the last minutes of the man who died under the wheels of a car on the nearby highway. “The force, the power, the fury that propelled him ever closer to the Belt Parkway was Lester, Ladone, Kern and Pirone.”

Racism Denied as Motive

Defense lawyers presented an entirely different picture to the jury. They contended that racism was not the cause of the incident, that Sandiford, Griffith and Grimes were up to no good when they walked through Howard Beach after the car in which they were riding broke down near the neighborhood.

“These weren’t three priests, ministers or rabbis,” charged Stephen Murphy, a member of the defense team. Murphy contended that Griffith was high on cocaine when he crossed the busy roadway.

During the six weeks it presented its case, the prosecution charged that three of the defendants watched the car hurl Griffith 12 to 15 feet into the air. Hynes told the jury the teen-agers then raced down another street to beat Sandiford, who pleaded in vain as he wrestled unsuccessfully with one of his much younger attackers: “Please, oh God, don’t kill me. I have a son like you.”

When he finally took the stand, Sandiford provided perhaps the trial’s most dramatic testimony. Standing in the cavernous courtroom, he pointed directly to Lester and charged that he was the attacker who had smashed his head so severely that 66 stitches were required to close the wounds.

There were several other key prosecution witnesses. One of the youths at the party, Robert Riley, 18, testified under an agreement to reduce charges against him. Riley told the court that the incident started when Lester ran into the birthday party and shouted, “Niggers on the boulevard. Let’s go kill them.”

Riley added that he and the defendants chased Griffith down a street leading to the highway where Griffith was killed.

Grimes, the companion of Sandiford and Griffith, showed the jury how he pulled a knife and held it in front of him when he was confronted by the group of white teen-agers carrying sticks, a bat and an iron pipe. Grimes said he fled after a teen-ager pounded the ground with the bat while others shouted racial epithets. Grimes, who, unlike Sandiford, managed to elude his pursuers, said he was struck in the back with a small stick but otherwise uninjured.

“Did you ever see Michael Griffith alive again?” Hynes asked.

“No,” Grimes answered.

The jury heard also a tape recording of a telephone call to 911, the police emergency number, from Theresa Fisher, a Howard Beach resident. “There are 12 guys out there . . . beating up on one black guy . . . with a crowbar,” Fisher frantically informed the police. “Have somebody come here really fast . . . . I mean this kid is screaming out here.”

Seven other whites who allegedly took part in the attack will be tried later.

The demonstrations at the Brooklyn Bridge and elsewhere Monday were called by a coalition of activist ministers and lawyers to protest alleged false arrests by undercover transit policemen and other incidents, as well as the Howard Beach case, which they cited as evidence of racism in New York.

Protesters at Bridge

At the start of the rush hour, about 500 protesters assembled in Brooklyn on streets leading to the Brooklyn Bridge. They were met by a massive police presence, including officers on horses and motorcycles. A police helicopter hovered overhead as the demonstrators marched, fists raised, through the streets chanting, “No justice, no peace.”

At the entrance to the bridge, they were met by a line of police officers, who succeeded in blocking most of the protesters. However, others took the subway to Manhattan and disrupted traffic on that side of the bridge. The protesters plus the presence of police officers and police vehicles on the span created a massive traffic jam.

Other protesters had gathered outside the courthouse while the seven-man, five-woman jury was still deliberating. The demonstrators taunted the teen-age defendants with chants of “murderers” as they entered the court amid extremely heavy security.

Staff writer Jay Sharbutt contributed to this story.