Brooklyn Rioter Gets 19 Years
Lemrick Nelson Jr. was sentenced to 19-1/2 years in prison Tuesday for his part in the fatal stabbing of Jewish scholar Yankel Rosenbaum during the 1991 racial rioting in Crown Heights.
Nelson, 22, was given the maximum possible sentence by Judge David Trager in Brooklyn federal court, where he was convicted 13 months ago of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights. Nelson, who is black, earlier had been acquitted in a state court of stabbing Rosenbaum.
In a statement to the court, Nelson denied committing the crime. Turning to look at Rosenbaum's family, he said, "I just want to say I have sympathy for your feelings for the loss of your son. I had no part in it. I've been found guilty. ... I'm like a scapegoat."
Rosenbaum, a native of Australia, was fatally stabbed on Aug. 19, 1991, the first of four nights of unrest in Crown Heights, which has a large population of blacks and Orthodox Jews. The trouble erupted after a 7-year-old black boy, Gavin Cato, was fatally injured in a traffic mishap involving a car driven by a Hasidic Jew.
A mob of black residents chased Rosenbaum, a visiting scholar studying the Holocaust, to a street corner, where he was stabbed. Rosenbaum died in a hospital hours later, after identifying Nelson, then 16 years old, to police as his assailant.
The victim's brother, Norman, was present in the courtroom with their parents. The mother, Fay Rosenbaum, delivered a tearful statement to the court, calling her son "the consummate innocent victim."
She said her son was killed out of "blind, baseless bigotry, because he was Jewish."
"There have been no apologies from those responsible for Yankel's murder ... no remorse, nothing," Mrs. Rosenbaum said, her voice breaking at times.
Under federal rules, Nelson will have to serve his entire sentence in prison; there is no parole in the federal system.
Charles Price, 44, was convicted of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights during the same federal trial as Nelson. He will be sentenced later; his lawyers have sought to overturn the jury's finding that he incited a crowd to "get Jews."
The rioting in Crown Heights, which followed 1980s racial incidents in Howard Beach, Queens, and Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was a major blow to New York's then-shaky race relations. David Dinkins, the city's first black mayor, was harshly criticized by Jewish groups for failing to do enough to stop the disturbance criticism that helped sink his 1993 re-election bid.
Still pending is a civil suit brought by the Jewish community and Norman Rosenbaum against the city and its former leaders for failing to protect Jewish residents by cracking down on the rioters.
Both Dinkins and then-police commissioner Lee Brown have vigorously denied charges that they pursued a "no arrest" policy during the rioting, and a federal judge recently dropped them as individual defendants in the lawsuit. The judge, Federic Block, said Dinkins and Brown had "acted reasonably" in "chaotic conditions."
The city reportedly is trying to work out a settlement of the lawsuit. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said last week that any agreement would include an apology by him for the city's handling of the disturbances. Dinkins later criticized Giuliani for suggesting an apology was necessary.
The Crown Heights case went to federal court after Nelson's 1992 acquittal by the state jury. The verdict triggered outrage among some politicians and the Jewish community and in 1994 U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a civil rights investigation that led to the federal charges.
Written by Richard Pyle
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