"It Isn't Fair"

A federal grand jury steps in

It seemed an unremarkable Saturday-night scene: a topless bar in working-class Detroit, shouted epithets, an ugly brawl. But this particular fight was one-sided and fatal, and turned out to be a bleak commentary on the emotions running high in Motor City in June 1982. The victim, Draftsman Vincent Chin, 27, a Chinese American, was at his bachelor party; he was to be married in nine days.

His attackers, a father who was a Chrysler foreman and his stepson, were angry and addled: Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz blamed Japanese carmakers for Detroit's problems, and Chin--Chinese or Japanese, it made no difference to them--was a convenient target. "It's because of you we're out of work," screamed Ebens, who was in fact employed full time. The pair got a baseball bat and beat Chin to death. Said he as he lost consciousness: "It isn't fair." When Ebens, 44, and Nitz, 23, were sentenced last March after confessing to the murder, Chin's dying complaint seemed all the more apt: Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman gave the killers three years of probation and fines of $3,780 each. He said that the men, who had no prior criminal records, were "not the kind of people you send to prison." The light sentences enraged newspaper editorialists across the country and prompted Asians to mount a protest campaign. "I love America," said Chin's mother Lily, 63, a naturalized citizen. "I don't understand how this could happen in America." The protests reached Washington where the Justice Department last summer launched an investigation into Chin's murder.

Last week a U.S. grand jury in Detroit indicted Ebens and Nitz on new, federal charges: conspiring to deprive Chin of his civil rights and causing his death because of his race.

Both crimes carry maximum sentences of life imprisonment.

Because the new indictments were brought under federal civil rights law, and not a state murder statute as before, they should not constitute double jeopardy for Ebens and Nitz.

In Detroit, Judge Kaufman refused to take issue with the new criminal prosecution. "If the Federal Government thinks it should indict them," he said, "then that's what it should do." Lily Chin said the grand jury's action "makes me feel that there's still hope for justice in this land. I'm grateful and hopeful. But happy I'm not. My son is gone forever." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.