Race Riot Trial Testimony Challenged
YORK, Pa. — The attorney for a former mayor told jurors Thursday that testimony had failed to show he had provoked a white gang before a black woman was slain during race riots in 1969.
Prosecutors “haven’t proven a thing” against Charlie Robertson, attorney William Costopoulos said sternly during closing arguments.
Robertson, 68, who was a police officer at the time, was on trial on charges of inciting the gang members to violence and providing ammunition in an effort to even the score after a white patrolman was fatally shot in a black neighborhood.
Robertson, who went on to become York’s two-term mayor, was on trial with two co-defendants.
During the 12-day trial, a witness, Rick Knouse, testified that Robertson pulled up to a crowd that had gathered outside a gang hangout, gave him rifle ammunition and told him to “kill as many” blacks as he could.
Hours later, 27-year-old Lillie Belle Allen was shot to death in one of scores of attacks during the 10-day violence between blacks and whites.
Costopoulos played down Knouse’s account.
“Rick Knouse was 16 when he saw things that nobody else ever saw in 1969 and heard things nobody else ever heard,” Costopoulos said. One witness, Arthur Messersmith, testified that he saw Robertson give ammunition to Knouse, but didn’t recall seeing Robertson incite Knouse to kill. Messersmith and Knouse struck plea agreements in the case.
Following the defense attorneys, prosecutors were to present their closing arguments. Co-defendants Robert Messersmith, Arthur’s brother, was on trial for allegedly firing the fatal shot; Gregory Neff was accused of firing three times at Allen’s vehicle.
The all-white jury was expected to get the case Thursday afternoon. All three defendants faced up to life in prison if convicted.
Allen, who was visiting from Aiken, S.C., was shot on July 21, 1969, after she got out of her family’s Cadillac to try to help her panicking sister steer the stalled vehicle away from a mob of armed whites.
Robert Messersmith’s lawyer, Peter Solymos, said his client was being “offered up as a sacrificial lamb to the gods of political correctness.”
He said prosecutors were trying the case as “simply a racist killing by a racist youth” but argued that Messersmith was not a racist and that his gang was organized largely for neighborhood sports competitions, not for violent or racist purposes.
Solymos didn’t deny that Messersmith was on the street and armed that night, but cited expert testimony that his client couldn’t have fired the fatal shot into Allen’s chest because Allen was behind a car nearly as tall as she was.