Lemrick Nelson: Difference between revisions

Lemrick Nelson, Jr. (born July 31, 1975^[1]) is an American who took part in the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum during the 1991 Crown Heights riot. After three trials, he was convicted of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights, and served a ten-year sentence.

According to information presented by his lawyers in 1995, Nelson had a troubled childhood. His mother, who reportedly suffered from mental illness, repeatedly tried to abort him before he was born. As an infant, he lived with his mother at a shelter for battered women. Nelson's earliest memories involved a physical altercation between his father and mother. Eventually, his mother abandoned him when he was 18 months old.^[2][3]

After seven-year-old African American Gavin Cato was accidentally killed by a Jewish motorist on August 19, 1991,^[4] some black residents of Crown Heights rioted. Shortly after the riot began, a group of approximately 20 young black men (including Nelson) surrounded Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old University of Melbourne student in the United States conducting doctoral research. They stabbed him several times in the back and beat him severely, fracturing his skull. Before being taken to the hospital, Rosenbaum was able to identify 16-year-old Lemrick Nelson, Jr. as his assailant in a line-up shown to him by the police.^[5] Rosenbaum died later that night.

Nelson moved to Georgia after October 1992.[1] He was subsequently arrested several times over the following five years.[2]

He was charged with both aggravated assault for slashing a teenage high school classmate, Erik Heard, in the shoulder in January 1994, and for carrying a concealed weapon (a scalpel) at the time of his March 1994 arrest.[3][4][5] He pleaded guilty in DeKalb County Superior Court in Decatur, Georgia in March 1995.[6][7] He was convicted with regard to both crimes on his guilty plea.[8][9] He was sentenced to up to 120 days in a boot camp, all of which he served, and three years' probation.[10][11]

Federal prosecutors said in case filings that his razor attack: "resulted in Nelson's expulsion from school, during which Nelson physically resisted the police officers who were attempting to arrest him after Nelson refused to leave the school grounds." [12]

Before he served his 120-day sentence, he was arrested in Brooklyn on June 23, 1995, and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest with regard to a confrontation that he had with police.[13] A warrant was issue for his arrest, which was deemed a parole violation.[14]

Though Nelson contended that religion had not been a factor in his decision to join the mob—that he had been drinking alcohol and gotten "caught up in the excitement"—prosecutors at his trial said Nelson had told a police officer he had heard someone shout "Let's get the Jew!" before he and the crowd attacked Rosenbaum.^[6] Rosenbaum's brother, Norman Rosenbaum (who had been a prosecutor in his native Australia), scoffed at Nelson's assertion, arguing that videotapes showed that Nelson was not intoxicated and "The excitement was when that mob called out, 'There's a Jew, let's get the Jew... It was the excitement of getting the Jew." ^[7]

Charged with murder, Nelson was acquitted in 1992 by a largely African-American jury. Some of them later attended a party to honor Nelson as a "hero."^[8]

After the Rodney King case, in 1993, some people suggested that the U.S. Department of Justice re-try Nelson under the federal criminal civil rights statute.^[9] Nelson was later convicted of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights, but not of having directly caused the victim's death. According to Cornell law professor Sherry Colb, the jury's verdict was "logically incoherent." Though Rosenbaum's family had sued the hospital where he died for malpractice, the jury was supposed to have--but did not--ignore this information in determining Nelson's guilt, reasoning that the hospital and Nelson could not both be guilty. Colb writes that "this line of reasoning can most generously be described as misguided and less generously as stupid." ^[10]

Nelson admitted for the first time at his 2003 trial that he had stabbed Rosenbaum, and he apologized to Rosenbaum's family.^{[11][12][6][13]}

U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, disappointed that Nelson had not been given a life sentence in his 2003 trial, said:

There was never any doubt that Lemrick Nelson was the person who stabbed [Yankel Rosenbaum], and there was never any doubt Lemrick Nelson stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum because he was Jewish. This jury today has found Lemrick Nelson guilty because of just that.^[14]

According to New York Magazine, Lemrick’s initial acquittal fueled anger at Mayor David Dinkins, with Dinkins becoming “a surrogate for Lemrick Nelson,” in part because of Dinkins’ support for the verdict, saying ‘I have no doubt that in this case the criminal-justice system has operated fairly and openly.’” ^[15] According to Edward Shapiro, a historian at Brandeis University, “it is possible that David Dinkins would have been reelected mayor in 1993 had the jury not exonerated Lemrick Nelson on October 29, 1992." ^[16]

Nelson served a total of ten years, including time served before his 2003 trial, and was released from prison on June 2, 2004.^[17] In an interview with the New York Post, Nelson indicated that he had stopped drinking.^[18]

Shapiro has called the riot "the most serious anti-Semitic incident in American history."^[16]