Did he ever spend a day in jail for the infamous subway shootings in New York?
He was accquitted of attempted murder charges, but convicted of a weapons charge. He spent 8 1/2 months in jail for it.
After he shot the four assailants, he walked over to one of them and reportedly said “you don’t look so bad, here’s another” and shot him again, leaving him paralyzed and brain damaged. The assailant and/or his family sued him in 1996 for intentional infliction of emotional distress and some sort of reckless endangerment suit. He was awarded $18 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitives. He probably wont be seeing much of it though; apparently the usual practice there is to garnish 10% of wages for 20 years.
Don’t forget that Goetz was later sued by one of his victims and ordered to pay something like $49 million (which Goetz of course doesn’t have). Last thing I saw on him was about ten years ago, it was an interview in a porn mag, of all things, and Goetz said he was working for an unnamed employer in the Northeast.
D’oh! Okay, so I got the damage awards wrong. I was going from a vague memory, but the other stuff’s right.
Last year on a trip to Coney Island, I signed one of Goetz’s petitions to be on the ballot. New York’s parties are so irremediably corrupt that I’m all in favor of more candidates, particularly loony ones. Once it comes to actual voting, mind you, I pull the lever for one of the corrupt, party-line candidates.
It’s all about choice, you know…
As to the OP, no, BG spent no time in jail for the “infamous subway shootings.” He did spend considerable time for his violations of the idiotic “Sullivan Laws,” NYC’s utterly failed gun control statutes, which, by any legal standard, are grossly unconstitutional and illegal.
While it is clear that BG is not a ‘poster boy’ for anything I can think of, his case drew national attention and served to focus matters on the issue of gun control in general, and on the success/failure of NYC’s laws in particular. (It would seem fair to delete the word ‘success’ in that sentence…)
The “boys” Goetz shot on the subway were known hoodlums attempting to rob him; the four of them surrounded him, accosted him and asked to “borrow” $5. One had a sharpened screwdriver in his hand in his pocket. There is no doubt whatsoever as to the felonious intent of the four “boys.” Thus the acquittal of BG on the attempted murder and assault charges.
8 1/2 months seems a bit steep for failing to jump through a bunch of patently illegal bureaucratic hoops, don’tcha think?
Bumping this somewhat old thread:
“Police say 65-year-old Bernie Goetz was nabbed in a sting operation in Union Square on Friday afternoon selling $30 worth of pot to an undercover officer. Police say he told the undercover to hang on, went back to the apartment where he has lived for decades and returned with the marijuana. He was then arrested on charges of criminal sale of marijuana.”
Surprising.
Not only was he aquitted of the attempted murder charges, I think the first grand jury wouldn’t even indict him on those charges. They kind of had to indict him on the gun charges, because Goetz’s gun was clearly unregistered, and even if it had been, he had no license to carry a concealed weapon. And he had more unregistered guns in his home.
The DA had to go back and convene another grand jury to get the attempted murder (or whatever the actual charge was) indictment. And then the trial jury wouldn’t convict him on anything but the gun charges.
Such was the mood in New York City in the early 80s. Crime was really bad (and the perception of the amount of crime was probably even worse).
I don’t think the story about the sharpened screwdrivers turned out to be true, though. While Canty and Ramseur and the other two (can’t remember their names right now) were undoubtedly planning to rob Goetz, they didn’t threaten him with weapons. They did have screwdrivers in their possession, but apparently they weren’t sharpened, and the men planned to use them to break into video game coinboxes.
This probably isn’t true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Goetz quotes the prosector in the case saying, in his summation to the jury:
Wikipedia’s account jibes with my memory of both the actual event and the trial.
I’m not saying that the shooting of Darrell Cabey after he was incapacitated by Goetz’s first shot is justifiable (or that anything Goetz did was justifiable), only that he probably didn’t say that.
No, not at all. New York’s gun control laws had not been found unconstitutional in 1983, when Goetz shot those men, and have not been found unconstitutional to this day.
As I understand Heller and McDonald, those cases do not prohibit regulation of the carrying of concealed weapons. McDonald says:
I’m not a lawyer, let alone a Constitutional scholar, but it seems to me that laws regulating the carrying of concealed weapons are in fact Constitutional.
In any event, Goetz clearly violated the law of New York at that time.
He shot four men, paralyzing one. Did he have alternatives? I don’t know. He could haven given up his wallet. It is possible that he could have retreated to another suway car (I’m not sure about this – I wasn’t there). It is likely (although admittedly not certain) that the mere display of his gun would have deterred the men.
And why should he retreat, give up his wallet or merely threaten with the gun instead of use it - this is simply judging the real offenders on a different standard to the victim.
The offenders could just as easily not tried to rob anyone, there is little risk in not robbing people.
Why should he have retreated? Why should anyone retreat?
For me, the contents of my wallet are worth less than someone’s life. It’s that simple. That’s why I should retreat, or try to use non-lethal means to resist robbery, or simply give up the contents of my pockets.
It’s not judging the robbers by a different standard than the one we apply to the person being robbed. Mr. Goetz was not at risk of being sentenced to death (in fact, the maximum sentence for the crime of which he was convicted was one year in prison, I think). It’s a judgment of the value of life. Anyone’s life.
Since people seem interested in discussing the original case, let’s move this over to Great Debates. Please note that the original thread was started in 2002.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
He shot those guys in a small enclosed place that was in motion. I’m guessing the terrified passengers might have appreciated Goetz turning over his wallet instead of endangering all of their lives.
Busted for selling weed, huh? I thought the guy was dead. Really.
He certainly could have retreated to another subway car. Most robbers have what is called the ‘right to retreat’ doctrine: If somebody you want to rob retreats, he can leave with all of his possessions, and, the robbers will chuckle at the lesson learned.
It is uncertain, not likely, what the display of a gun would have done. Got him attacked? Killed?