Goetz Trial Jury Selection to Begin Today

NEW YORK — Preliminary jury selection is scheduled to begin today for the long-delayed trial of Bernhard H. Goetz, who shot four young men after they accosted him in a Manhattan subway car nearly two years ago.

Mark Baker, one of Goetz’s lawyers, said about 300 prospective jurors will be screened for eventual selection. He said the trial, which is expected to last six to eight weeks, will not begin before late January.

Asked if the trial might be a “zoo” because of the intense media interest, Baker laughed and said: “A circus would be more like it. A zoo connotes just animals. A circus connotes everything.”

Goetz, 39, a tall, thin, self-employed electronics specialist, is charged with four counts of attempted murder.

Appears at Auction

On Tuesday he appeared in public to purchase $1,055 worth of equipment, including an oscillator, volt generator and a rheostat, at an electronics auction in Stamford, Conn.

“I service electronics--that’s my business,” Goetz told the Stamford Advocate. He declined to answer questions about the trial. “I just want some peace,” he said.

One of the four men Goetz shot remains paralyzed from the waist down, and has suffered brain damage. The other three have been convicted on charges unrelated to the confrontation in the subway car.

Baker said Goetz, who is free on $5,000 bail, has been confined to the East Coast under his bail restrictions. “Where’s he going to go?” Baker asked. “He’s got the most famous face in America.”

Claims Self-Defense

Goetz shot and wounded the four with an unlicensed pistol after one accosted him and asked him for $5 on an IRT express train on Dec. 22, 1984. Goetz’s lawyers contend he shot in self-defense because he thought he was going to be mugged. None of the men had displayed a weapon.

The case drew international attention as Goetz was alternately praised for fighting back against crime, or criticized for acting as a vigilante. The case also had racial overtones because Goetz is white and the four men he shot are black.

The man most seriously wounded, Darrell Cabey, 21, is “dead in so far as anyone still breathing can be dead,” his lawyer, Ronald L. Kuby, said Thursday. He said Cabey is paralyzed from the waist down, and suffered brain damage that reduced his intellectual level to that of an 8-year-old.

According to Goetz’s videotaped statement to police, he shot Cabey twice. “You don’t look so bad,” Goetz recalled saying before shooting Cabey in the back as he lay wounded on the subway floor. “Here’s another.”

Cabey Charge Dropped

A criminal charge against Cabey stemming from an armed robbery prior to the Goetz incident was dismissed when he was deemed incapable to stand trial because of his condition. Cabey, who lives with his mother, has filed a $50-million lawsuit against Goetz.

The second man, James Ramseur, 20, was sentenced in April to 25 years in prison for his role in the rape, sodomy and robbery of a pregnant woman on May 5, 1985, according to the Bronx district attorney’s office.

The third man, Barry Allen, 19, pleaded guilty on March 11 to snatching a woman’s necklace, his second such conviction, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

The fourth man, Troy Canty, 21, is in a drug rehabilitation program, according to his lawyer, Howard R. Meyer. He said Canty was completing the program after pleading guilty to a charge of petty larceny for stealing $14 worth of quarters from a video game.