Killing of Vincent Chin
Killing of Vincent Chin | |
---|---|
civil rights , but verdict overturnedNitz not guilty of violation of civil rights | |
Sentence | State sentences: Both perpetrators sentenced to three years of probation and $3,780 fine Federal sentence: Ebens: 25 years in prison (overturned) |
Charges | State charges: plea deal )Federal charges: Violation of civil rights (2 counts each) |
Litigation | Ebens ordered to pay $1.5 million to Chin's family, Nitz ordered to pay $50,000 |
Vincent Jen Chin | |
---|---|
Hanyu Pinyin | Chén Guǒrén |
Yue: Cantonese | |
Yale Romanization | Chàhn Gwó-yàhn |
Jyutping | Can4 Gwo2 Jan4 |
Vincent Jen Chin (
Although accounts vary, the men were expelled from the club following a physical altercation. Ebens and Nitz eventually found Chin in front of a Highland Park McDonald's. There, Nitz held Chin down while Ebens repeatedly bashed him on the head with a baseball bat. Chin was taken to
Wayne County Circuit Court Judge
Background
Vincent Chin was born on May 18, 1955, in
Throughout most of the 1960s, Chin grew up in
During an
Killing
On June 19, 1982, Chin was having a bachelor party with his friends Jimmy Choi, Gary Koivu and Robert Siroskey at the Fancy Pants Club in Highland Park to celebrate his upcoming wedding.[17] Seated across the stage from them were two white men, Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, laid-off autoworker Michael Nitz.[4] According to an interview by American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore for the Detroit Free Press, after Chin gave a white stripper a generous gratuity, Ebens shouted, "Hey, you little motherfuckers!" and told a Black dancer, "Don't pay any attention to those little fuckers, they wouldn't know a good dancer if they'd seen one."[17] Racine Colwell, a dancer at the bar, later testified that Ebens said, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work."[18][19][20] This statement later provided the evidence for civil rights litigation against Ebens.[21] He later claimed the argument was not about Chin's race but the Black dancer's gratuity.[17]
Ebens claimed that Chin walked over to him and Nitz and threw a punch at his jaw.[17] The fight escalated as Nitz shoved Chin in defense of his stepfather, and Chin countered.[17] One of the dancers reported that Ebens and Chin picked up chairs and started swinging them at each other.[16] Nitz suffered a cut on his head from a chair that Ebens had intended to use to strike Chin.[17] Chin and his friends left the room, while a bouncer led Ebens and Nitz to the restroom to clean up the wound. According to Ebens and Nitz, one of Chin's friends, Robert Siroskey, came back inside to use the restroom and apologized to the group, stating that Chin had a few drinks due to his bachelor's party. Ebens and Nitz had also been drinking that night, although not at the club, which did not serve alcohol.
When Ebens and Nitz left the club, they encountered Chin and his friends who were waiting outside for Siroskey. Chin called Ebens a "chicken shit", at which point Nitz retrieved a baseball bat from his car and Chin and his friends ran down the street.[17] Ebens and Nitz searched the neighborhood for 20 to 30 minutes and paid another man 20 dollars to help look for Chin, before finding him at a nearby McDonald's restaurant. Chin attempted to escape, but was held by Nitz while Ebens repeatedly bludgeoned Chin with a baseball bat until Chin's head cracked open.[22] Ebens was arrested and taken into custody at the scene of the crime by two off-duty police officers who had witnessed the beating.[23] One of the officers said that Ebens wielded the bat like he was swinging "for a home run".[22] Michael Gardenhire, one of the police officers, called for an ambulance.[24] Chin was rushed to Henry Ford Hospital and was comatose on arrival. He died on June 23, 1982, after remaining in a coma for four days.[7][24]
Legal proceedings
State criminal charges
Ebens and Nitz were charged with
Kaufman explained his light sentences based on Ebens' and Nitz's lack of previous criminal records, their stability in the community, and his opinion that the two would not go on to harm anyone else.[16] He said in justifying his decision that Ebens and Nitz "weren't the kind of men you send to jail"[8][9] and "[y]ou don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal".[8][16] Kaufman argued that the assault was "the continuation of a fight that Mr. Chin apparently started", and that had the incident been a case of self-defense, Ebens and Nitz "would not be guilty of anything."[16] Kaufman had been a Japanese-held prisoner of war during World War II,[1][8] but denied that any anti-Asian sentiment had influenced his ruling.[1]
The Detroit Free Press argued in an editorial that "the overall handling of the Chin case seems disturbingly casual", remarking on the limited evidence presented at sentencing, the reduced charges due to plea bargaining, the lack of a prosecutor at the hearing to argue for a harsher sentence, and Kaufman's disregarding of the pre-sentence report's recommendation of imprisonment. The editorial concluded that the "result was a process that made Vincent Chin's life seem cheap and the criminal justice system either callous or perverse".[26]
The lenient sentencing of Ebens and Nitz enraged the Asian-American communities in the Detroit area and across the United States, who saw it as a sign of public indifference toward racism directed at Asian-Americans.[8] The president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council said the verdict amounted to a "$3,000 license to kill" Chinese Americans.[10] Others across the country were spurred into activism; the advocacy group American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) was formed to protest the sentencing[9] and began working toward a judicial appeal.[8] The ACJ quickly gained the support of diverse ethnic and religious groups, advocacy organizations, and politicians such as the Detroit City Council president and Congressman John Conyers.[27]
Federal civil rights charges
Government officials, politicians, and several prominent legal organizations dismissed the theory that
Journalist
The 1984 federal civil rights case against the men found Ebens guilty of the second count and sentenced him to 25 years in prison; Nitz was acquitted of both counts. Ebens' conviction was overturned in 1986—a federal appeals court found that an attorney for the ACJ had improperly coached witnesses.[8][32] Chin's friend Jimmy Choi had at first supported Ebens' version of no racial animosity or epithets and that Chin threw a chair that injured Nitz, but he changed his statement after meeting the ACJ attorney.[17][33]
After the verdict, the ACJ once again mobilized to press the Department of Justice for a
Civil suits
A civil suit for the unlawful death of Chin was settled out-of-court in March 1987. Michael Nitz was ordered to pay $50,000. Ronald Ebens was ordered to pay $1.5 million, at $200/month for the first two years and 25% of his income or $200/month thereafter, whichever was greater. This represented the projected loss of income from Chin's engineering position, as well as Lily Chin's loss of Vincent's services as a laborer and driver.[36] Ebens left the state[8] and stopped making payments in 1989.[21]
In November 1989, Ebens reappeared in court for a creditor's hearing, where he detailed his finances and reportedly pledged to make good on his debt to the Chin estate.[37] However, in 1997,[38] the Chin estate was forced to renew the civil suit, as it was allowed to do every ten years.[36] With accrued interest and other charges, the adjusted total became $4,683,653.89.[38] Ebens sought in 2015 to have the resulting lien against his house vacated.[39]
Aftermath and legacy
Chin was interred in Detroit's Forest Lawn Cemetery.[40] In September 1987, Chin's mother, Lily, moved from Oak Park back to her hometown of Guangzhou, China, reportedly to avoid being reminded of her son's death. She returned to the United States for medical treatment in late 2001 and died on June 9, 2002. Prior to her death, Lily Chin established a scholarship in Vincent's memory, to be administered by the ACJ.[41] In 2010, the city of Ferndale, Michigan, erected a milestone marker at the intersection of Woodward Avenue and 9 Mile Road in memorial of the killing of Chin.[42]
Chin's case has been cited by some Asian Americans in support of the idea that they are considered "perpetual foreigners" in contrast to "real" Americans who are considered full citizens.[43][44][45] Lily Chin stated: "My son is beaten like an animal and, and the killer is not in jail. If this happened in China, [Ebens and Nitz] would be put in [an] electric chair. This is freedom and democracy? Why isn't everybody equal?"[46] and "What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives [...] Something is wrong with this country."[47][48]
The attack was considered a hate crime by many[8] but it predated the passage of hate crime laws in the United States. Sociologist
Documentaries
- Academy Award for Best Documentary.[49]
- Vincent Who? (2009), documentary written and produced by Curtis Chin and directed by Tony Lam.
See also
- Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States
- Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States
- Hate crime laws in the United States
- Racism in the United States
- Stop Asian Hate
- 2021 Atlanta spa shootings
- List of homicides in Michigan
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-306-44144-8.
- OCLC 1084220292.
- ISBN 978-0-8160-2680-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4408-6089-8.
- ^ "New YA book details how Vincent Chin's killing galvanized Asian American activism". NBC News. April 16, 2021. Retrieved July 31, 2023.
- ^ Kaur, Harmeet (June 23, 2022). "Vincent Chin was beaten to death 40 years ago. His case is still relevant today". CNN. Retrieved July 31, 2023.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-61069-550-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4129-2694-2.
- ^ ISSN 2161-3362. Retrieved April 17, 2023.
- ^ a b c Fish, Eric (June 16, 2017). "35 Years After Vincent Chin's Murder, How Has America Changed?". Asia Society. Retrieved April 17, 2023.
- ^ Wu, Frank H. (June 29, 2012). "難忘陳果仁" [Why Vincent Chin Matters]. The New York Times (in English and Chinese (China)). Retrieved April 9, 2021.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-60917-352-4.
- ISBN 978-0-8135-4933-0.
Further reading
- "CAPAC Marks the 30th Anniversary of Vincent Chin's Murder" (Press release). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. June 22, 2012.
- Ho, Christine (n.d.). "The Model Minority Awakened: The Murder of Vincent Chin - Part 1". USAsians.net. Archived from the original on October 11, 2022.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - Jones, Shannon (June 23, 2012). "Thirty years since the murder of Vincent Chin". World Socialist Web Site.
- Perez, Tom (June 25, 2012). "Remembering Vincent Chin". Washington, D.C.: Office of Public Affairs, United States Department of Justice.
- "Vincent Chin is murdered". This Day in History. History.com. A&E Television Networks. March 26, 2021.
- Wang, Frances Kai-Hwa (June 15, 2017). "Who Is Vincent Chin? The History and Relevance of a 1982 Killing". NBC News.
- Wilkinson, Sook; Jew, Victor, eds. (2015). Asian Americans in Michigan: Voices from the Midwest. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-3974-9.
- Wu, Frank H. (2002). Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books. pp. 70–71. ISBN 978-0-465-00639-7.
- Yip, Alethea (June 5–13, 1997). "Remembering Vincent Chin". AsianWeek. Vol. 18, no. 43. ISSN 0195-2056. Archived from the originalon June 2, 2007.
- Yoo, Paula (2021). From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement. New York: Norton Young Readers. ISBN 978-1-324-00288-8.
External links
- American Citizens for Justice Archived November 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- Partial transcripts from Who Killed Vincent Chin? at the Wayback Machine (archived August 23, 2002)
- Opening lecture at the 5th Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies: Boundaries, March 27–29, 2008, by Frank H. Wu, Wayne State University
- US v. Ebens appellate ruling
- VincentChin.net at the Wayback Machine (archived August 9, 2007)
- Vincent Chin page at McMurder.com
- Vincent Who? (2009) – Official Movie Site