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[QatarChic]

I usually read el periodico online and came across this video today- shocking and disgusting. What amazes me, is the guy said he was drunk when this happened and 'doesn't remember what happened'- doesn't look so to me...is this kind of stuff getting to be more common now in Spain?..but what stood out for me, was the other passenger who just sat there and did nothing

http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=46&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=452174&idseccio_PK=1021

[Moore]

Another odd thing was that we was carrying on his phone conversation: horrific multi-tasking. At least they arrested the bloke in the end, but it really is quite depressing that the other passenger didn't help at all.

[QatarChic]

very depressing- I thought Sergei was released on police bail and the most he could get was 15 days?[/b]

[john_n_carolina]

...that's awful....just for being (or seeming) like an Ecuadorian. i hope that's an isolated incident and he spends a few years in the worst part of the Spanish prison. there he can practice his kickboxing all he wants.

[john_n_carolina]

Ecuador takes on 'racist attack'

Ecuador's foreign minister is to take charge of the legal case of an Ecuadorean teenager who was the victim of an apparent racist attack in Spain.
Maria Fernanda Espinosa said she would travel to Barcelona to meet the 16-year-old girl, who was repeatedly hit and kicked by a man on a train.

The attack in Barcelona, which has provoked widespread indignation, was captured on film by security cameras.

A local man, aged 21, was charged with racially aggravated assault.

Identified only as Sergi Xavier MM, he was released pending further proceedings, a court statement said.

'Vile act'

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said that the government would pay the teenager's legal fees.

Ecuador's foreign ministry said on Tuesday it had sent a diplomatic note to the Spanish embassy in Quito in which the government expressed its "most energetic protest for this xenophobic act", which happened on 7 October.

Spain's foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, described the attack as "vile and intolerable", and said it would not go unpunished.

The girl's mother, who asked not to be identified, told Radio Quito she was extremely worried about her daughter.

"Now I don't feel safe when she's alone, when she has to go to school," she said, according to the Associated Press news agency.

[QatarChic]

Well, the update is that the girl gave evidence today and just a short time ago the guy who assaulted her went in to tell his side of the story.... based on that they will decide whether to rearrest sergio or not........apparently the other guy in the video (Argentine) who sat and did nothing was complaining to police today that he feels intimidated by his neighbours who have been giving him a hard time for not intervening- they do have a point, why didn't he do anything?

[john_n_carolina]

...about not intervening: the beginning stuff probably you see quite often, i used to see it on the NY Subway. then the kick and hit didn't really come until the very end and came real fast and then the guy was gone.

also, i think this Sergei guy is pretty big, compared to this little Argentine guy. i could probably see his point.

for me, it would be like in the 80's in the crack-rap era riding the subway in NY. would i have stood up to a 6'5" white / colored man that started this?? probably not. you could have been stabbed, shot, etc.

in fact, isn't the most notorious case of the white suburban guy that DID go into defense in NY, very similar?? ill try and find the links, he went into to defense and started stabbing the perpetrators and 1 or 2 died...

[wildchild]

it's also quite obvious that the boy didn't even see the kick. and as he was wearing headphones, he probably didn't hear much either.

[QatarChic]

was he wearing headphones?

[john_n_carolina]

yes, i think he was. actually, the girl didn't even see the kick coming if you look closely at it. he kind of did a swing around the post kick from behind, then hit her in the face. all within 5-6 seconds. i probably would have followed the guy off the subway though, if i had a cell phone. but, also my first inclination would be to medically check on the girl. she could have a broken nose, etc. i think the Argentine boy did see the first stuff though. i mean, this guy is pretty big, and he spit on her too??

[QatarChic]

[john_n_carolina]

...i'd bet he goes away for a long time. this is a pretty harsh act of violence. here are some things that make it worse for him:

1) it's intentional
2) she wasn't even looking, so it's worse than assault, like hitting someone on the head with a bottle from behind on Park Av in NY, aggravated assault.
3) he spit on her
4) she's a minor
5) she didn't provoke it
6) she doesn't even know him
7) hitting someone in the head / face is worse than the leg /arm. it's quite a bit more serious, can almost be classified as 'attempted manslaughter'?
8 whatever he said, if it's racist will be bad for him also... but that's her word against his and that won't stand in court....

the only thing i think his attorneys will try and use as his defense is the camera. how can you indict someone off a camera?? this could be someone else, etc...

[john_n_carolina]

20 years after Goetz, N.Y. a changed city
The Eighties Club
The Politics and Pop Culture of the 1980s
Table of Contents Material Things
25. The Subway Vigilante


NEW YORK (AP) � Twenty years after the Barnhard Goetz subway shooting ignited a national furor over racism, gun control, crime and vigilante justice, New York is a far different place, and the sensational case now exists mostly as an artifact from another era.

Two days before Christmas, 1984, a 37-year-old self-employed electrical engineer named Bernhard Goetz descended into New York City's subway system at the 14th Street Station and boarded the IRT's No. 2 Express. The thin, bespectacled Goetz found himself in the same car with four black teenagers -- James Ramseur, 19, Darrell Cabey, 19, Troy Canty, 19, and Barry Allen, 18. When Canty told Goetz to give him five dollars, Goetz stood up, drew a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver from under his blue windbreaker, and began shooting. All four youths were wounded, two of them critically. Goetz slipped away at the Chambers Street Station, rented a car and drove to Bennington, Vermont, where he disposed of the pistol and the windbreaker in the woods. A week later, on New Year's Eve, he turned himself in at the Concord, New Hampshire police station. By then the "Subway Vigilante" had become a national celebrity.

The vast majority of those who wrote to newspapers, called in to radio talk shows, or participated in man-on-the-street interviews were pro-Goetz. "Thug Buster" t-shirts urging the acquittal of Goetz became a hot item in the Big Apple. The Guardian Angels collected money from NYC subway riders for a Goetz defense fund. Support for Goetz crossed racial lines; the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) offered to raise money to defray the Subway Vigilante's legal fees. But the soft-spoken, self-effacing Goetz refused all financial assistance and seemed, at first, to shun the spotlight following his release from Riker's Island. Charged with attempted murder and possession of a firearm, he paid his own bail.

New York state law permitted a citizen to use deadly force in self defense, but according to the prosecution Goetz had gone into the subway that day with cold-blooded murder on his mind. Two of the four youths had been shot in the back while trying to flee; one of them, Darrell Cabey, suffered brain damage and was paralyzed from the waist down. Nonetheless, a grand jury declined on January 25, 1985 to indict Goetz for anything more than the illegal possession of a handgun. While Goetz had no criminal record, his four victims had nine convictions and ten outstanding bench warrants between them. Cabey awaited trial for armed robbery. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau could not initially bring himself to offer any of the youths immunity for testifying before the grand jury. To make matters worse for the prosecution, other passengers came forward to speak on Goetz's behalf.

But in March 1985 Morgenthau claimed to be in possession of new evidence and reopened the case. Acting Supreme Court Justice Stephen Crane approved the DA's application to call a second grand jury. Even though he faced a reelection bid and was well aware that public sentiment ran three-to-one in favor of Goetz, Morgenthau decided this time to give Ramseur and Canty immunity in exchange for their testimony. In addition, a subway employee who witnessed the shooting confirmed Morgenthau's suspicion that Goetz had been looking for trouble. Goetz's lawyers complained of "judicial lynching," but their client seemed oddly indifferent to his fate.

Goetz's celebrity status was due largely to a growing public concern about crime. Violent crime had risen sharply in the previous two decades, so that a person was five times as likely to be a victim of violent crime in 1985 as in 1960. Though it declined briefly between 1980 and 1983, the violent crime rate was on the rise again by mid-decade; in 1986 alone it would soar 12 percent. The criminal justice system was widely perceived as slow and ineffectual. Many Americans were convinced that it favored the criminal over the victim. There simply weren't enough police officers to go around. Spending on local police rose 65 percent between 1978 and 1983, while over 1,500 citizen crime watch and neighborhood patrol groups were created. In 1984, stiff anti-crime legislation limiting the rights of suspects was passed by Congress, enthusiastically backed by liberals as well as conservatives. As Dr. James Q. Wilson of Harvard so aptly put it, "There are no more liberals on the . . . law and order issue . . . because they've all been mugged." Despite the widespread "tax revolt" of the late Seventies and early Eighties, taxpayers in 35 states proved willing to foot big bills for prison expansion programs. The same number of states reinstituted the death penalty following a 1976 Supreme Court decision permitting capital punishment. At least 400 victims advocacy groups sprang up, establishing hotlines and pressuring legislatures to pass strong "victims bills." Fear of violent crime pervaded society and the American people were sick and tired of being afraid. In this environment, individuals like Bernhard Goetz who took the law into their own hands were likely to be hailed as heroes.

Born in Queens, Goetz graduated from NYU with a degree in electrical engineering. Moving to Florida to work with his father, a real estate developer, he was briefly married, then returned to New York City and started his own business out of an apartment, working on electronic equipment. In January 1981, Goetz was mugged and injured by three youths at a subway station. Though his application for a permit to carry a pistol was denied, he bought the .38 Smith & Wesson anyway. He appeared shy and unassuming, but according to prosecutor Gregory L. Waples, the somewhat nerdish Goetz was "an emotional powder keg." The prosecution relied heavily on Goetz's confession to police, in which he admitted that his intention was "to murder them, to hurt them, to make them suffer," and that he had coldly and methodically fired a second round into an already wounded Darrell Cabey.

Following a seven-week trial in mid-1987, a jury found Goetz not guilty on 17 counts of attempted murder and assault. The courtroom audience erupted into applause after the verdict was announced. Red-bereted Guardian Angels helped shield the Subway Vigilante from the crowd gathered outside the courthouse. Consisting of ten whites and two blacks, the Manhattan jury took four days to deliberate before reaching a decision that NAACP director Benjamin L. Hooks called a "grave miscarriage of justice." Others complained that if Goetz had been black and his victims white the trial result would have been altogether different. But, as Time correspondent Otto Friedrich pointed out, a black 39-year-old named Austin Weeks had shot one of two white teenagers who hurled racial insults at him in a Brooklyn subway a few years earlier, and though Weeks had remained a fugitive for six years, a grand jury refused to indict him.

In deciding whether Goetz had acted criminally, the jury based its conclusion on what a "reasonable person" would have done under the circumstances. In their view Goetz had acted reasonably, especially since he had been mugged before. The jurors seemed indifferent to the prosecution's contention that Goetz had gone to the subway that day in search of trouble. And the poor impression left by two of the youths themselves when they took the stand damaged the prosecution's case; one acted the part of a thug so perfectly that he was removed from the courtroom. It was easy for the jury to believe that Goetz had felt menaced that day by the four teenagers. Besides, all across the country citizens who believed they could no longer rely on the police or the courts to effectively protect society from the scourge of crime were taking steps to protect themselves, so why should Bernhard Goetz be punished for doing the same? The Subway Vigilante remained a hero to many; after delivering the verdict, the jurors took turns asking for his autograph.


The Aftermath

Attorneys for Darrell Cabey filed a civil complaint against Bernhard Goetz in 1985, a case that finally came to trial in 1996. Goetz was sued for $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages by Cabey, who was paralyzed and brain damaged by the shooting. Cabey's case depended largely on Goetz's own comments during the December 22, 1984 incident; after shooting Cabey once Goetz admitted telling him, "You don't look too bad, here's another," and shot him a second time. On April 24, 1996 the jury awarded Cabey $43 million, though no one expected he would get anything close to that amount, since Goetz had little money.




]

[john_n_carolina]

...was 1984, i just remembered the case....i was a freshmen in H.S., and i remember the national debate this started.

[QatarChic]

Thanks for that Johninmaine-interesting stuff and I agree with all your points you mentioned, but Sergio wasn't sentenced to prison. Instead he has to:

-present himself to the court between the 1st and 15th of each month
-report to the local police station in Santa Coloma two times a day
-can't be within 1000 metres of the girl from Ecuador, or communicate with her in any way

He also can't go to the neighbourhoods of Sant Boi, Santa Coloma de Cervell� y la colonia G�ell withour permission from the judge, (presumably because she lives in/around these areas). He's also banned from travelling using the S-8 metro/train line that runs through Sant Boi.

http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=46&idioma=CAS&idtipusrecurs_PK=7&idnoticia_PK=453283