Detroit Police Beating Case Gets Under Way : Law: Jury selection begins in trial of three ex-officers charged in death of black motorist. Rights groups are keeping close eye on proceedings.

For the third time this year, a major U.S. city waits on edge for the outcome of a racially charged trial of police officers accused of brutalizing a black driver.

Jury selection began Wednesday in the murder and assault trials of three white former Detroit police officers who have been charged in the November, 1992, beating death of 35-year-old Malice Wayne Green.

Green, who was black, allegedly died in a hail of fists and flashlights after refusing to open his clenched fist when police stopped his car outside a suspected crack house in a rundown west side neighborhood.

An autopsy found that Green had cocaine in his body when he died. At a preliminary hearing last December, a paramedic testified that all Green was holding in his clenched hand was a piece of paper.

Civil rights organizations are monitoring the proceedings in Detroit Recorder’s Court, where Larry Nevers, 52, and Walter Budzyn, 42, who were fired from the force after the beating, face charges of second-degree murder.

If convicted, they would face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Robert Lessnau, 32, who was also fired, is charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm, a felony that could carry a prison term as long as 10 years. He is accused of hauling Green out of his car and kicking him in the head.

No charges were filed against four other officers who were at the scene. A charge of involuntary manslaughter was dismissed against the one black officer, a sergeant, who was there but the dismissal is under appeal, said prosecutor Kym Worthy.

Over the next few days, the court plans to seat 32 jurors--12 jurors and four alternates for each officer charged with murder. Lessnau has asked for a bench trial.

The judge and jurors will all watch the testimony simultaneously in one courtroom--a practice that Worthy said is common here because it saves time and money--but the verdicts will be rendered separately.

The attorneys involved estimate the combined trial will last four weeks to six weeks.

The tensions surrounding the case come after the jitters struck Los Angeles in April, as two acquittals and two convictions were handed down in the federal trial of four police officers accused of violating motorist Rodney G. King’s rights.

And last week, it was Miami as a jury deliberated two counts of manslaughter in the case of a Latino officer, William Lozano, accused in the deaths of a black motorcyclist and his passenger. An earlier conviction had been overturned on grounds the jurors feared unrest as a consequence of acquittal.

Last Friday’s verdict was not guilty, but federal authorities have announced they will investigate alleged civil rights violations in the case.

In both cases, the aftermath was generally calm as police and National Guard troops stood on alert.

Now Detroit takes its turn.

For weeks after the death, visitors gathered in sub-zero temperatures at the spot where he was killed, laying flowers by a wall adorned with a plastic-covered portrait of Green.

About 150 people rallied downtown in protest and nearly 2,000 people attended Green’s funeral.

Public officials here acted quickly to tamp down sparks of rage. Police Chief Stanley Knox suspended the seven officers who had been at the site of Green’s death and called the beating “a senseless act.”

Mayor Coleman A. Young proclaimed that Green was “literally murdered by police.”

These pronouncements leave Budzyn’s attorney, Michael Batchelor, “not real optimistic of getting a good jury” in Detroit. Though lawyers for Nevers and Lessnau have been rebuffed in attempts to change the trial site, Batchelor said “there is a good possibility” that he will also make an effort to move the proceedings after jury members have been chosen.

Worthy said: “We absolutely feel we can get a fair trial in Detroit. People are not mindless automatons. . . . The standard is not whether they’ve heard anything but whether they’ve formed an opinion, and if they have, can they put that opinion aside.”

When Judge George W. Crockett III asked the first pool of 60 prospective jurors whether they had qualms about serving, all but 17 said they would rather not, and more jurors were called in.

On the wall behind Crockett hung a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., hands clasped. To his left, the U.S. flag was draped with a Detroit Police Department banner.

John Goldpaugh, Nevers’ lawyer, asked a west side resident about his conversations with neighbors in the wake of the Green killing.

“Were there comparisons with the Rodney King situation?” he asked. “Yes,” the man answered.

Batchelor suggested that his defense strategy will be to question the credibility of witnesses to Green’s death.

“The only individuals that said my client had (anything) to do with what went on are people who were in the crack house,” he said. “Many, not all, but many will testify that they had ingested cocaine before that episode.”

Meanwhile, the city waits.

“Right now, people believe there’s going to be justice,” said City Council member Gil Hill, a black who spent 30 years with the Detroit Police Department.

Although he disagreed with the mayor’s early statements--”that was absolutely prejudging the situation”--he added: “I think it’s important that the case remain in the city.”

Community leaders, he said, are working “actively and passionately” to keep Detroit’s neighborhoods calm throughout the trial.