Cat And Mouse

More than two years after Bernhard Goetz pulled out a revolver and shot four black teenagers who had demanded $5 from him in a Manhattan subway car, his case went before a New York City jury last week. The panel of two blacks and ten whites, half of whom have been victims of crime, will try to settle a question millions have debated since the December 1984 episode: Was the subway vigilante justified in defending himself against what he saw as an imminent attack, or was he a trigger-happy racist poised to strike at the slightest provocation?

As his trial opened last week, Goetz, 39, an electronics technician, faced 13 criminal charges, including four for attempted murder. Defense Attorney Barry Slotnick insisted, however, that Goetz "was the real victim in this case." Slotnick announced that he planned to defend his client by "prosecuting" the four "vicious predators" who surrounded Goetz on the subway car. Despite an admonition from Judge Stephen Crane, Slotnick referred to Goetz's victims as "drug addicts" and attempted to bring up their criminal records. (Two of the four are in jail on other charges, one for the rape of an adolescent girl, and a third is completing drug rehabilitation. The fourth shooting victim, Darrell Cabey, was left paralyzed from the waist down.)

In the face of Slotnick's guerrilla tactics, Assistant District Attorney Gregory Waples pressed on with the quiet demeanor of a man who believes that the facts and Goetz's own words will lead inescapably to a conviction. At midweek Waples played a two-hour tape recording made by the detectives who questioned Goetz when he surrendered to them in Concord, N.H. In it, Goetz said the four "wanted to play with me, like a cat plays with a mouse" -- before he assumed a shooter's stance and methodically emptied his pistol at his tormentors. "I know this sounds horrible," he said, "but my intention was to murder them . . . to make them suffer as much as possible."

After his first four shots, the prosecution says, Goetz approached Cabey, who was slumped in the subway seat opposite him. "You don't look too bad," Goetz said. "Here's another." He fired his fifth shot, severing Cabey's spine. Even if Goetz's first rounds were fired in self-defense, Waples maintains, his final shot went well beyond the need to protect himself. In his taped confession, Goetz said, "If I was thinking a little bit more clearly, I would have put the bullet against his head and fired."