Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 27, 1992                   TAG: 9203270181
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS                                LENGTH: Medium

JUDGE CHIDES TYSON, PUTS HIM BEHIND BARS

Marion Superior Court Judge Patricia Gifford refused to let the 25-year-old former heavyweight boxing champion remain free on bail while his conviction is appealed. Within two hours, he was behind bars.

"Something needs to be done about the attitude you displayed here," the judge told Tyson.

Tyson, impassive after the sentence was read, slipped off his watch and tie pin, handed them to his attorney and hugged 81-year-old Camille Ewald, the New York woman who raised him from his teen-age years as a promising boxer.

In a rambling 10-minute plea for leniency, Tyson apologized for his "crass" behavior during the 1991 pageant but said he never harmed his accuser, 19-year-old Desiree Washington of Coventry, R.I.

Defense attorney Vincent Fuller opened the 90-minute hearing with a plea for a suspended sentence and probation.

He said Tyson was raised in poverty and ill-used by the late trainer Cus D'Amato, who saw Tyson only as a potential champion, not a troubled youth. The boxer grew up in a "male-dominated world" that ignored his education and his ability to relate to women, Fuller said.

Gifford commended Tyson for rising above his upbringing but added: "I think from everything I've read, we're looking at two different Mike Tysons.

"As to whether you are capable of committing this crime again, quite honestly I am of the opinion that you are," the judge said.

Tyson could have been sentenced to 20 years on each count.

World Boxing Council President Jose Sulaiman said that Tyson is innocent and likened the sentence to "a dinner of blacks by white cannibals."

Former champion Roberto Duran, a Panamanian, also called it racism.

Washington also is black.

There were other manifestations of racial protest.

Scores of listeners participated in an afternoon call-in show on WTLC, a black-oriented radio station in Indianapolis.

"All but three were upset over the sentence - I think a combination of some anger, resignation, reinforcement of people's feelings that African-Americans cannot get fair justice in Indianapolis," station manager Amos Brown said.

A nationwide "Mercy for Tyson" petition drive was begun last month by a group of black ministers, including the Rev. T.J. Jemison, president of the 8 million-member Baptist Convention U.S.A. based in Nashville, Tenn. Jemison didn't plan to comment before a news conference next week, a spokeswoman said.

The Rev. S.R. Shields, chairman of the local drive, said he had given the judge petitions with 30,000 signatures.

But an Indianapolis woman who led a counter-petition drive, Carlin Chapman, said: "I'm elated. I just wish he got more time.