ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: TUESDAY, June 1, 1993                   TAG: 9306010080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DETROIT                                LENGTH: Medium

TRIALS TO BEGIN IN BEATING DEATH OF BLACK MOTORIST

Faded plastic flowers, a torn poster of Malcolm X and a rain-streaked mural of Malice Green memorialize the corner where the 35-year-old black motorist was beaten to death seven months ago.

"First Rodney King, now Malice Green," says a sign taped on a boarded-up building across the street.

Separate, simultaneous trials are to begin Wednesday for three white police officers who witnesses say bludgeoned Green with heavy metal flashlights outside a suspected drug house last Nov. 5.

Green was beaten when he failed to obey officers' commands.

The beating began as officers pulled Green from his parked car and he refused to open his clenched fist, witnesses said. Accounts of what he was holding vary - a wallet, a piece of paper, maybe drugs.

Green, an unemployed father of five, died of at least 14 blows to the head. Part of his scalp was torn off. An autopsy showed alcohol and cocaine in his system.

Officers Larry Nevers, 52, and Walter Budzyn, 42, are charged with second-degree murder. Officer Robert Lessnau, 32, is charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm. Nevers and Budzyn could be sentenced to life in prison and Lessnau faces up to 10 years if convicted.

A fourth officer, Sgt. Freddie Douglas, who is black, was charged with a misdemeanor - willful neglect of duty - and is not being tried with the others.

All four were fired. None has publicly commented on the charges.

Although nothing in a preliminary hearing indicated race was a direct factor in the beating, "the events speak for themselves," said Joann Watson, executive director of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The beating stunned Mayor Coleman Young, who became Detroit's first black mayor six years after a police raid set off the 1967 race riots. Young has made integration of the Police Department a cornerstone of his administration.

The case's similarity to the police beating of another black motorist, Rodney King, has some people concerned that acquittals in Detroit could provoke the rioting and looting.

Keywords:
FATALITY 


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