Supremacist Metzger Begins Battle in Court : Trial: ‘White power’ leader faces civil charges stemming from the 1988 beating death of a black man in Oregon.

Tom Metzger’s war has come.

But unlike the street skirmishes he has preached for years as part of his Southern California-based White Aryan Resistance (WAR), the battlefield is on the fifth floor of the Multnomah County Courthouse here.

Trial opened Monday in a lawsuit by a group of Deep South civil rights attorneys who contend that Metzger and his son John should be held accountable for the beating death two years ago of a black man by a gang of young, white radical “skinheads.”

Should Metzger lose in the $10-million suit, he could be ordered to turn over his newspapers, his “white power” cable television programs, his telephone hot lines, even his Fallbrook, Calif., home and TV repair shop.

“If they win this case against Tom Metzger, it will definitely hurt the national white-supremacy movement,” predicted Leonard Zeskind, research director of the Center for Democratic Renewal in Kansas City, Mo., which monitors hate crimes around the nation. “It will knock them to their knees.”

Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., is representing the uncle of the slain black man in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Dees fashioned the lawsuit after his successful civil case against the Alabama arm of the Ku Klux Klan. He won a $7-million jury award after a black youth was lynched in Mobile, Ala., in 1981.

Although the Metzgers were in California at the time of the Portland killing and were not charged in the criminal case, Dees contends that they and their WAR organization helped incite three skinheads to murder Mulugeta Seraw, a 28-year-old Ethiopian immigrant.

The three attacked Seraw outside a Portland apartment in November, 1988. He was beaten with a baseball bat and kicked with steel-toed boots. He died of a fractured skull. The assailants, part of a gang called the East Side White Pride, eventually pleaded guilty to the killing and drew prison sentences of 9 to 30 years.

In pretrial motions Monday, Dees said Tom Metzger was on the phone with one of the jailed skinheads shortly after the murder.

“He gave him advice on his case and talked to him three more times after that,” Dees said. “That is highly relevant evidence.”

Dees will also present evidence from several Southern California skinheads who say that they were given direct orders from WAR to show the Portland skinheads how to “carry out Tom and John Metzger’s goals of harming blacks and Jews.”

One of the skinheads, Michael Barrett of Redwood City, Calif., claims in an affidavit that he left the Metzgers’ home base and headed for Portland with five baseball bats, noting that “baseball bats and Doc Marten boots are the weapons of choice of the skinheads.”

Judge Ancer Haggerty, a highly decorated black Marine veteran of Vietnam, reserved judgment on the Metzgers’ motion to exclude certain evidence as constitutionally protected free speech.

Metzger, who is representing himself at the trial, contends that neither he nor his 22-year-old son, who is the national leader of the skinhead movement, had any direct involvement in the beating death.

He also accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of bribing witnesses to testify against him, an allegation the center’s attorneys denied. And he warned that it may be impossible to seat a truly impartial jury, especially because of the notoriety of the case.

Indeed, as jury selection began, the only black in a 30-member jury pool and a retired Jewish attorney were excused when they told the judge they could not be fair to the Metzgers.

In addition, Metzger said, “There’s the problem of entering and leaving the courthouse every day and being subjected to the possibility of violence.”

Courthouse security was extremely tight Monday. Portland police, taking note of the recent bombing of the front doors of the federal courthouse in San Diego, posted officers inside and outside, on every floor and on the roof.

A group calling itself the Holy Church of the White Fighting Machine of the Cross has claimed responsibility for the San Diego bombing, warning “all concerned to drop the lawsuit in Portland, Ore., against White Power.”

Both supporters and opponents of the Metzgers have arrived in Portland in force. Police were assigned in record numbers for a peaceful march through the city by anti-racist protesters Sunday.

Exactly how large Tom Metzger’s WAR group has become is uncertain. But observers point out that because other white-supremacy leaders have died, gone to prison or given up the fight, Metzger has emerged as perhaps the strongest and most vocal of his kind in the nation.

Metzger, 52, rose to prominence in the old John Birch Society and the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and in 1980 ran unsuccessfully for Congress.

He later abandoned the traditional racist organizations and formed his own White Aryan Resistance.