A Litany of "Not Guilty"

Klansmen and Nazis are freed in Greensboro killings

While 25 policemen stood guard inside Courtroom 3-C of the Guilford County Courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., and police sharpshooters patrolled the surrounding rooftops outside, Jury Foreman Octavio Mandulay slowly announced the verdicts. There were five counts of murder and one count of rioting against each of the six defendants. As the litany of "not guilty" grew, a relative of one of the accused choked back a sob. By the time the 36th and final "not guilty" was called out, the defendants themselves were weeping.

So ended the 22-week trial--the longest in North Carolina's history--of four Ku Klux Klansmen and two members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Party. The charges: killing five members, four white and one black, of the Communist Workers Party at a C.W.P.-sponsored "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro in November 1979. The outcome drew predictably inflammatory responses from both extremist camps. Calling the verdict "a great victory for white America," North Carolina Nazi Leader Harold Covington maintained that it proved "we can beat the system on their own ground." Signe Waller, a C.W.P. member and the widow of one of the victims, charged that the trial was part of a government cover-up and added that the decision served as "a green light if you want to go out on the street and shoot somebody down."

But the case as presented in court belied such crude polemics. Defense attorneys argued that their clients, who had been dared to attend the rally by the C.W.P., acted in self-defense after C.W.P. members struck their cars with sticks and brandished guns. David Wayne Matthews, who told the police shortly after the event that he had shot at least three people, testified that he grabbed his shotgun when he saw "niggers" with guns. "One of them looked up and hollered, 'I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch, kill the Klan,' and I took my gun up and shot at him." In fact, the prosecution established that the only people on the scene with guns that day were white.

The C.W.P. members who had witnessed the shootout refused to cooperate with state investigators or to testify at the trial. Video tapes of the incident taken by local television crews showed one of the defendants, Jerry Paul Smith, firing away with a pistol in each hand at one of the victims. The tapes were played several times at the trial, but failed to convince the all-white jury as to which side had fired first. What apparently sowed the most doubt in jurors' minds was an FBI audio-analysis tracing the origins of 39 shots fired in the melee. The "shot chart" showed that roughly half of the shots--17 to 22--came from the Communists. "The shot chart," said Defense Attorney Percy Wall after the verdicts, "that's what did it."

The jurors deliberated for seven days and voted at least twelve times before reaching their decision. They acknowledged afterward that they were swayed ultimately by the self-defense plea. Added Mandulay: "We do not condone the actions of any of these groups." The Justice Department is already investigating the case to determine whether the acquitted defendants can now be charged with civil rights violations. This sort of follow-up prosecution is used by the department on occasion, but it requires pinpointing some federally guaranteed civil right --for example, voting, interstate travel or the use of a public accommodation--that the defendants denied the victims. Officials concede that such a deprivation may be hard to find in the Greensboro incident.

The case promises to linger on no matter what the Justice Department decides to do. Greensboro officials, already upset because their city served as a battleground for those they view as "outsiders," were afraid that the decision will only spark further trouble. The verdicts did not trigger the rioting that officials feared, but more than 1,500 people in Guilford and Durham counties participated in peaceful demonstrations to "express citizens' concerns" over the acquittals. In the only violent reaction, a gunman in a speeding car fired shots at acquitted Klansman Smith as he drove along a deserted Lincoln County road. Smith, who was not hit, managed to fire back before his car crashed into a tree. Meanwhile, the C.W.P. and other organizations announced plans to hold an anti-Klan, anti-Nazi, anti-government rally in Greensboro in early December. Clearly, the city will not be allowed to forget the tragedy that took place in its streets last year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.