2 Convicted in New York Riot Killing

A black man who was acquitted by a state jury of murdering a Jewish scholar during a 1991 riot in Brooklyn was convicted in federal court Monday of violating the victim’s civil rights in the stabbing.

Lemrick Nelson Jr., 21, cried and put his head on the table as he heard the verdict that will likely bring him 6 to 20 years in prison under sentencing guidelines. As he was led out of court, his supporters angrily chanted: “No justice! No peace!”

Also found guilty was Charles Price, 43, who was accused of inciting a black mob to “get Jews.”

The conviction stemmed from the slaying of 29-year-old Yankel Rosenbaum, who was attacked in a riotous furor after a 7-year-old black boy was accidentally struck and killed by a car driven by an Orthodox Jew.

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Rosenbaum, a Hasidic history student visiting from Australia, was the only person killed in four nights of violence in Brooklyn’s racially mixed Crown Heights section.

Calm prevailed in the hours after the verdict Monday in Crown Heights, and at City Hall, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he anticipated a peaceful reaction.

“Those who agree with the verdict and those who disagree with the verdict all want peace,” he said.

Nelson was acquitted of murder in 1992 by a mostly black state jury, outraging politicians and Jewish leaders who demanded federal intervention. Two years later, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno ordered a civil rights investigation that led to the federal charges.

The federal jury--two Jews, three other whites, three blacks and four Latinos--reached its verdict after 20 hours of deliberations over four days.

“To persevere does bring results,” said Rosenbaum’s brother, Norman, who came from Australia for the trial and had fought to get the case reopened. “The American people should know that this is a good day for justice.”

Federal prosecutors argued that Rosenbaum was deprived of his civil rights in being randomly attacked on a public street because of his obvious religious garb. The car accident that had sparked the violence involved a motorcade carrying the Lubavitcher Hasidim’s spiritual leader, the Rebbe Menachem Schneerson.

Price had not been previously charged in the attack; he was identified only recently from videotape of the rioting.

Prosecutors said because of Price’s long record of petty crimes, he probably faces a longer sentence. No sentencing date was set for either man.

Defense lawyers claimed both men were scapegoats in the politically and racially charged case.

Several police officers who testified at the 1992 trial returned to retell how they found a bloody knife in Nelson’s pocket minutes after the attack, how the dying man identified Nelson as one of his assailants, and how Nelson confessed twice that night.

Defense attorneys sought to revive doubts about the police version, suggesting--as did Nelson’s lawyers at his murder trial--that evidence was planted and that Nelson’s confessions were obtained under duress.

In a dramatic courtroom demonstration, defense attorneys had Nelson put on the baggy, bloodstained blue jeans that police said he was wearing the night of the stabbing--intending to show that they were too loose and cumbersome for anyone to run with a mob or attack people. The pants dropped to the floor.

Prosecutor Alan Vinegrad ridiculed the ploy, noting that baggy clothes are a teenage fashion. Paraphrasing attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr.’s rhyme about O.J. Simpson’s gloves, Vinegrad told the jury: “If the pants don’t fit, I don’t give a -- you fill in the rest.”

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For all the passions stirred by the riot and its aftermath, many black residents of Crown Heights received Monday’s verdict with a calm bordering on indifference.

“I don’t see anything happening around here, and I live in the heart of it,” said Aaron Clark, 22, a black musician from a mostly Jewish block of Crown Heights. Clark voiced the sentiments of a number of black residents who said that too much time had passed and that they were too worried about their own problems to consider the conviction of Nelson or Price as significant.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in New York, said: “This verdict sends a message that New York will not tolerate mob violence and anti-Semitism and that those who incite are as guilty as those who act.”