Teen Gets Up to 31 Years in Death of Black in Queens

One of three teen-agers convicted in the deadly Howard Beach racial attack was sentenced to a maximum of 31 years in prison by an angry judge who said he acted with a “depraved indifference to human life.”

Jon Lester, 18, was defiant, however, saying, “I will be acquitted on appeal,” as he rose from his seat and was ushered from the crowded, tense courtroom in Queens state Supreme Court.

Whites on one side of the courtroom erupted into applause at Lester’s defiance but blacks on the other side stood up and shouted, “Justice has been served!”

Judge’s Anger Shows

State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Demakos was visibly angry as he told the court he had received almost 2,000 letters--all but one of them asking for leniency. The letter calling for a harsh sentence was from Mayor Ed Koch.

Demakos gave Lester the strictest sentence allowed under state law--five to 15 years for second-degree manslaughter, five to 15 years for first-degree assault and one year for a misdemeanor conspiracy conviction.

“Such a hatred and callousness toward another human being must not go unpunished,” Demakos said in rejecting defense moves to have the sentences run concurrently.

He said he disagreed with letters that insisted the Howard Beach incident was not racially motivated.

“No ifs, ands or buts. This was an incident of racial violence,” Demakos thundered in the courtroom. “Hatred breeds racism and racism breeds hatred. What troubles me about these letters is that there is no remorse.

“You showed depraved indifference to human life,” Demakos told Lester.

The victim, Michael Griffith, 23, and two black companions were chased by a gang of white youths after their car broke down and they wandered into Howard Beach, a neighborhood in Queens.

Special State Prosecutor Charles Hynes asked that Lester receive the maximum sentence, saying in court papers that he hurled racial obscenities and threatened to kill a black officer at the Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill. Lester was there before his transfer to Rikers Island.

Four young white men were charged in the Dec. 20, 1986, attack in Howard Beach. Last Dec. 21, the jury rejected murder charges against all four and cleared one, Michael Pirone, altogether.

Sentencing Next Month

Scott Kern, 18, and Jason Ladone, 17, were convicted of second-degree manslaughter and first-degree assault. They are to be sentenced next month.

Lester was the only one of the four defendants with a criminal record at the time of the Howard Beach killing. He is serving a one- to three-year prison term for a weapons conviction for shooting windows out of a car.

The British citizen was born in Manchester, England. When he was 13, he moved to Howard Beach with his divorced mother, a secretary with three other children.