Woman Mike Tyson Grabbed Finds Solace in Jury’s Verdict

The woman who convinced a jury that Mike Tyson grabbed her buttocks and breasts in a disco doesn’t mind that she won only $100 in damages.

“It was the principle,” Sandra Miller said after the jury declined to award any punitive damages Thursday. “He knows he did it. I know he did it. The jury proved that he did it.”

A day earlier, the five-woman, one-man panel had ordered the former heavyweight champion to pay $100 in compensatory damages for the incident. Miller had sought an additional $2.5 million in punitive damages in her civil case.

The jury determined that Tyson grabbed Miller after she refused his advances at Bentley’s Disco in Manhattan on Dec. 10, 1988.

Tyson testified during the four-day trial in Manhattan’s federal court that he never touched Miller. “I’m just happy they saw it as the truth,” Tyson said Thursday.

Supporters, including boxing promoter Don King, swarmed around Tyson in the courtroom, congratulating him on the decision. He jokingly pulled a $100 bill from his pocket and placed it briefly on his forehead.

Miller, a 26-year-old Queens woman, said she was was happy with the outcome even though she did not get much money. She added that she felt that Tyson would continue hassling women.

“He should have been punished,” she said. “He hasn’t learned his lesson. There’s no stopping Mike Tyson.”

Before rejecting punitive damages, the jury listened to testimony from another woman who claimed that the boxer had reached under her dress on the same night as the Miller incident.

The second woman, Lori Davis, testified that she felt someone clutch under her dress as she was dancing at Bentley’s.

She turned and warned him not to try it again, she said. “Then it dawned on me that it was Mike Tyson. He was grabbing my butt. I felt humiliated, violated, disgraced and petrified.” Davis, a 31-year-old mental health therapist, has a $7-million lawsuit against Tyson pending in state court on Long Island.